Utopia, The Sound of Drums, Last of the Time Lords & Voyage of the Damned

Utopia

‘Utopia’ is the sort of episode which makes you sit up and take notice. It’s gritty, fast-paced, and strongly directed by Graham Harper, written by Russel T Davies. It leads directly into the two-part season finale involving the (spoiler alert) Master, espouses high-production values and an exceptional performance by one of the great British actors, Derek Jacobi and Professor Yana.

Chipo Chung

In fact the only real problem with this episode is that it promises so much for the next two, and that promise is not really delivered on sadly. We see the return of John Barrowman as Captain Jack, and whilst he is a welcome return to the cast, I’m not sure his character was essential for any of the three episodes he appears in.

‘Utopia’ is set about as far in the future as anyone could conceive, on a far off planet where there are no stars and the human race is struggling to live in a dying universe. Now, I’m not sure how they survived on a planet with no sun or stars. Seems to me the temperature would be a thousand below freezing, if that. But hey, we all have to suspend our disbelief on occasion.

Derek Jacobi

The future-kind are hunting the humans there, most of which are waiting behind a gate in a hill where Professor Yana and his assistant Cho Tho (delightfully played by Chipo Chung) are readying a rocket to head to Utopia, a place that has been calling humans for hundreds of years. In some ways not a lot happens during this story, other than preparing the rocket to take off, which it does. The Future-kind get in in the end too. Again, the Future-kind if I had to be critical, were too clean. What’s with that? A common issue for creatures in both new and classic series. Sorry, digression!

It’s all about the big reveal, and the build-up to Yana opening his fob watch and realising he is the Master is handled perfectly. The way that things are being reincorporated into the series – like a fob watch (Human Nature), shows wonderful fore-thought and planning by Russel T Davies.

Derek Jacobi is really only the Master for five minutes, and how brilliant is he? It’s heart breaking for Chan Tho to be killed by him, but it’s this sort of rawness to an episode that makes you sit up and take notice. Then a regeneration, the Master’s this time, into John Simm and goodbye! The Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack, who we have learnt can’t die now, are stuck on this planet with the Future-kind at the door, and…

‘to be continued’

Oh how very dare you!

9/10

The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords

John Simms as the Master, with his wife in the background.

When last we saw our heroes, Jack, Martha and the Doctor, they were trapped on a far off planet with evil creatures about to rip them to shreds. So Mr Davies, the LAST thing you want to do is resolve that cliffhanger in some lame-arse way which suggests they never had a problem at all. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what he did.

And sadly, it never quite recovers. BUT I will say that I was not as disappointed as I thought I would be. My good friend Andrew was dreading these two episodes, however, even he thought they ‘weren’t as bad as I remembered’ after this viewing. However, the start is something not quite recovered from. I thought it was going to be brilliant to see how the Doctor got out of the sticky situation he was in, but no, Captain Jack had a vortex manipulator and zap! They were back on Earth on the Master’s tail straight away.

The Master, who was Mr Harold Saxon, who had just become Prime Minister of Great Britain. Strange choice in a way, that they would go back to number 10 Downing street again, which has been rebuilt, apparently exactly how it was – the interior looks exactly the same as ‘Aliens of London’!

The power of everyone on Earth revives the Doctor.

The first episode is better than the second. To be honest, the biggest issue is they pushed it all too far. The Master and his Toclofane friends – actually humans from the far future cannibalised by the Master – have built a fleet of rockets to wage war on the Universe, a huge percentage of people on Earth are dead and the world will never be the same. Davies has taken us to a point in the story that for the programme’s continuation there can only be one resolution – reset button.

The Master has converted the Doctor’s TARDIS into a paradox machine to allow the Toclofane to destroy their own past. Destroy the machine (apparently by shooting it as Captain Jack does) and everything goes back to the way it was. The only problem was the fact that the Master was holding all the cards. So Martha gets everyone on Earth to think the word “Doctor” at the same time, which allows the Doctor (who by the way has been aged to near death and for a time is a small piece of CGI in a cage) to become normal and then powerful and stop the Master.

Goodbye to Martha Jones.

It just didn’t do it for me. The cast is a mixed bag for this one too. My issues are with two cast members really. Freema Ageyman has been solid throughout the series, but to be honest the writers have not challenged her or done anything with her character. Having said that, I like Martha, I just think that more time was needed to be devoted to her characters. When suddenly she is supposed to be ultra-strong and clever, I’m not convinced. Besides the plot concept of her travelling the globe and spreading the word about the Doctor was a poor choice in my view as well. We fly into the realms of fairytale stuff at times in these two episodes.

John Simms as the Master. Look, he is what Delgado was to Pertwee in a way, to Tennant. Sharing traits with the lead good-guy but with that dark edge to it. And that’s ok, but some of the laughing and silly stuff and the use of pop music to accompany his mania (not his fault in anyway) just left me wondering what freaking drugs Davies was on when he wrote the thing.

The Master has a wife (Alexandra Moen). Hmmm, Davies didn’t feel any need to expand on that. Why? For appearances? And she seems to not like him, or does she? In the end no, she (spoiler alert) shoots him. Tell us more, we want as an audience to understand characters. If the story doesn’t allow you to explain sufficiently what are significant characters, then maybe they shouldn’t be significant characters. Likewise for Martha’s family, throughout the series they were little more than tools and that continued here. Martha’s mum didn’t like the Doctor, she was scared of him, but come these episodes that’s been forgotten because the series’ arc needs it to be.

But nothing is as disappointing as a great build up, which started in ‘Utopia’, being ruined by the answer being the reset button. NOTHING. So perhaps this one is disappointing because of what could have been. At least Martha chooses to leave the TARDIS in the end, and fair enough too. It makes sense, as far as her character is concerned. She’s realised she ain’t gonna marry the Doctor, and moves on.

It’s still a bit of fun, and the first episode is a lot better than the second. Hard to rate.

5/10

Voyage of the Damned

So by now the idea of a Christmas special appears to be very ingrained into the formula of Doctor Who. This is definitely the biggest of the three they’d done up to this point, being incredibly extravagant and looking like the entire BBC budget was spent on what is essential a combination of movies involving big cruise ships and disasters, transported into space. The one that this story borrows most of its plotline from is curiously NOT ‘Titanic’, (after all, the ship is called ‘Titanic’), but the 70s film ‘The Poseidon Adventure’, starring Gene Hackman and by coincidence one of my favourite movies of all time.

So perhaps it’s natural that I would like ‘Voyage of the Damned’ too. Disaster in space, a group of passengers led by the Doctor must make their way through the ruined ship to save their lives, and in this case the lives of the royal family and London, as that’s where the ship is heading. Add Kylie Minogue to the mix as Astrid, plus Geoffrey Palmer as the Captain of the vessel, spend a lot of money on it, a megalomaniac in charge of the company, and you have a great Christmas special. Oh wait, you need to add Christmas to it.

We also have the wonderful Clive

Banakafalata

Swift (playing Mr Cooper) who previously appeared in Doctor Who as the repulsive Jobel in ‘Revelation of the Daleks’. It’s very very well cast, we have a great set of characters. There’s the lovable overweight couple who both meet a tragic death, there’s Banakafalata, a small strange spiky red creature who is really a cyborg, the despicable entrepreneur who survives for some reason to make a mint off the disaster, and of course Astrid, who wants to see the Universe and took a job on the cruise liner for just that reason.

It’s very well done, despite the opening which tied in with the ending of the previous season when the Titanic crashes into the TARDIS which in the end meant nothing because the Doctor reversed in all by pushing a couple of buttons. Also, three characters die in one scene, where it might have worked better to space the deaths out, but the story was 70 minutes not 90 so I guess their hands were tied.

I enjoyed this one immensely, even though I understand that may not be the common experience in fandom. It looks superb. The best Christmas special by far.

8.5/10

42, Human Nature, The Family of Blood & Blink

42

Whilst this is not a great episode, it’s somewhat of an improvement from the previous three at least. Chris Chibnall wrote this one, and the concept is good I think – 42 minutes to live, the episode to play out in real-time, inspired by the show ‘24’. The sets are very good, the casting is solid, there’s a throwback in concept to ‘Planet of Evil’, Martha has some nice moments, and it looks good.

It’s got issues too, the idea of having to answer trivia to get through a whole bunch of doors grated with me and seemed to be a gimmick. There was some stuff I just couldn’t believe – the Doctor going outside in a space ship so close to the sun to save Martha for example. I liked the idea of the sun being alive, which is why they couldn’t leave with part of the sun on board the ship, but I was annoyed that the sun was then portrayed as evil and given a nasty catchphrase – ‘burn with me!’. As creepy as the phrase was, it just didn’t seem right to me.

Freema Ageyman hasn’t had the sort of character development that Billie Piper got. Her family has thus far been just used as tools to tell the plotlines, rather than developed characters like (as much as I disliked her) Jackie Tyler. Martha’s Mum is being used somehow by Mr Saxon to find out information on Martha and presumably the Doctor. Martha speaks on the phone to her mum a number of times in this episode, revealing it’s election day in Britain and presumably Mr Saxon is up for office. We’ve seen the ‘vote Saxon’ signs here and there too.

What it’s all about is perhaps more interesting than the stories we’re being told. ‘42’ feels like the Impossible Planet in many ways, the sets look similar, but I think the idea is better and far less… stupid. I wish the writer had chosen to make the sun more concerned about losing part of itself and less about being evil and creepy though.

6.5/10

Human Nature/The Family of Blood

Paul Cornell’s two-parter came from the book he wrote for the Seventh Doctor in the New Adventures series back in the 1990s. It’s set in 1913 at a boy’s school and on the whole is very good. It is certainly down on things that pissed me off or made me squirm. The only thing is, I’m not sure about the ending, and I’m not sure it fully fills the two episodes.

Paul Cornell is an excellent writer. He sets things up well, his character writing is top-notch, his ideas are wonderful. The idea that ‘what if the Doctor wasn’t the Doctor, what if he was human’ is a great place to start from. David Tennant gives his best performance here. Martha, sadly, is a bit generic. We have scarecrows as monsters, lovely! What more could you want?

The setting is perfect, and it’s shot wonderfully. They must have had a lot of late nights making this one! Some very good casting – especially Thomas Sangster as Tim Latimer. When you have young characters, it’s very important to find the right kid to play them! As Joan Redfern, John Smith’s ‘love-interest’, Jessica Hines does very well indeed. All Martha can do is regret that he’s not falling in love with her, which I must admit isn’t the strongest of concepts for a companion.

Thomas Sangster

The second part starts well, and the first part (Human Nature) is excellent TV, but after the battle at the school, it seems very stretched out for the last 25 minutes or so. It’s fine action and drama, as John Smith battles with the choice to open the watch. The Doctor is contained inside this fob watch and when opened John Smith will become the Doctor again, and John Smith is terrified. It’s wonderfully played by both Tennant and Jessica Hines, however it probably didn’t need to go for quite so long.

Then the ending. The Doctor was hiding from the Family of Blood as John Smith to spare them. Because in the end he imprisons all four members of the family in different places. One in a mirror – no, every mirror, one as a scarecrow forever, one in the heart of a star… I didn’t feel satisfied by that ending and I don’t like the idea, suddenly, that the Doctor is THAT powerful, or indeed it would seem magical too. Then what’s the point? He doesn’t beat them by doing something clever, or fighting them, in fact we don’t even see how it’s done. It’s just done, like magic. Well if it’s that easy, I’m surprised anyone goes up against him!

Despite those two issues, and especially on the strength of ‘Human Nature’, I still think this is a great story. It goes to show resolutions are hard to write well.

7.5/10

Blink

Steven Moffat’s contribution to series three is this story, the ‘Doctor-lite’ episode for the season. And we don’t see a lot of the Doctor or Martha at all, in a lot of ways it doesn’t feel like you’re watching an episode of Doctor Who to be honest.

The main character for this story is Sally Sparrow, played by Carey Mulligan (who would have made a great companion) who sneaks into an old abandoned house to take photographs, only to find there’s more going on there. Strange messages are left under the wall-paper from 1969 addressed to her. When she returns with her friend, her friend disappears just as a man arrives with a letter for Sally from her friend. This is the story where the phrase ‘timey-wimey’ is first heard, which does kind of describe this tale pretty well. Thankfully though, the concept isn’t that convoluted, it’s a reasonably logical story to follow with a host of wonderful elements to it.

Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow.

The Weeping Angels are the ‘monsters’ of the tale – creatures that turn to stone whenever someone can see them. It’s when you’re not looking that they move. What they do is send people back in time, rather than kill them, and feed off the displacement energy. I think that’s what they said! The Doctor is in 1969 with Martha without the TARDIS, and hides messages for Sally Sparrow on DVD easter eggs. Sally has a conversation with the Doctor on the DVD, whilst someone else writes everything down. It’s very clever, because later (for Sally Sparrow) yet earlier (for the Doctor) they bump into each other and Sally gives the Doctor the transcript so he can read it. So it all sort of works which is part of the beauty of ‘Blink’.

Also, it looks amazing. Not a high-budget story at a guess, but one very very well realised. The angels themselves look incredibly creepy, and I think this was voted the best new series episode of all in a poll somewhere? Not that I read the polls.

That seems perhaps a bit of stretch, but it’s certainly a great episode.

8.5/10

Gridlock, Daleks in Manhattan, Evolution of the Daleks and The Lazarus Experiment

Gridlock

The Face of Boe.

Into the past, into the future, the far future, a hundred years or something after the events of ‘New Earth’, but we are back on New Earth the planet for this tale about cars stuck on a motorway. It doesn’t make perfect sense – the city of New New York has been in lockdown after a mood (Davies decides to tackle drugs as one of his themes) went feral and became an infection. So everyone is stuck going very slowly around and around the motorway whilst the city is in quarantine. So how can rain get through? Because when the Doctor and Martha arrive it is raining.

Thomas Kincade Brannigan - Ardal O'Hanlan.

The majority of the episode is spent going from car to car with some lovely little characters, the most memorable played by Ardal O’Hanlan who is just a wonderful actor. He could play the Doctor one day I reckon, but in this story he’s a cat, called Thomas Kincade Brannigan. He’s a wife who’s human, and in their car they have a bunch of kittens!

Down at the bottom of the motor way are… the Macra. An interesting and perhaps somewhat out of the

The Macra lurk at the bottom of the expressway. CGI Macra

blue as a returning monsters, not that they play much of a role in the story, as in the second Doctor tale they live off the fumes, but apart from snatching the odd car they are pretty quiet. The Face of Boe reveals to the Doctor ‘You are not alone’, before dying. Who is the Face of Boe? Maybe it’s not important, or maybe we will find out in a later episode. A nice creation. The final piece of the story is this beautiful hymn that the motorists sing from time to time. It’s quite moving although strangely there appears to be a bit of a backing track at times.

Heading towards the light.

The story has its limitations. One – the CGI is very very clearly CGI. The time and money required to make it look more real I guess just wasn’t available so that’s a little disappointing. And the fact that for 12 years or more people have been stuck on the motorway without doing anything is a little hard to swallow. But it’s a pretty good one all up.

7.5/10

Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks

Miranda Raison as Tallulah - three ls and an h.

I know this story is not well liked, and after viewing it, it’s not hard to see why. It’s clunky, it features bad accents and bad acting, the concept is all a bit weak, and it’s more concerned with where the story is set that anything else.

I don’t know how this story came about or evolved, but I can only presume Russel T Davies came to the writer Jacqueline Raynor asking for a story set in New York City, or perhaps the brief was even more exact – NYC during the depression with Daleks. I don’t know exactly. Some writers work well to a brief, others don’t. Maybe that’s an issue here, maybe it was too constrained for Raynor I just don’t know.

Quite a view.

The Daleks find themselves underneath New York City in the depression, and are anxious to get the Empire State Building finished early so that a lightning strike mixed with solar flare activity will give them the energy they need to bring a whole bunch of new ‘human’ Daleks to life. The Doctor’s DNA mixes it all up though and the human Daleks destroy two of the real Daleks, who have already killed Dalek Sek, leaving one Daleks to scream ‘Emergency Temporal Shift’ and disappear – exactly how these four Daleks (the Cult of Skaro) escaped their previous misadventure.

Dalek Sek combines with Mr Diagorous to make... this.

They have pig slaves. They have turned people into part-pigs to serve them. WHY? WHY OH WHY? It’s pointless and certainly adds nothing to the plot. Two of the main characters are hard to deal with as an audience. Miranda Raison is Tallulah, with three ls and an h as she tells everyone she introduces herself too. She’s the star of a revue at a theatre not too far from the Daleks’ base of operations. Just because the character’s a stage star though shouldn’t mean that all her lines are written like they are part of a musical. It’s terribly clichéd stuff ‘Hands in the air and no funny business!’. Oh dear dear dear. And the accent is very much a ‘stage’ New York accent. The sort of thing you hear if you go to London’s West End and watch a British production of an American musical.

And pig slaves. Every story needs em, right?

But she’s not a patch on Mr Diagorus, as if that’s even a real name. Actually, before he mingles with Dalek Sek he’s fine, but after they become one, apart from looking ridiculous, it becomes one of the worst acted parts in Doctor Who history. Ok, he was given a seriously tough job, but it’s honestly dreadful. I am sorry. But it’s pure pain watching that character.

Actually, much of the two parts are seriously painful.

3.5/10

The Lazarus Experiment

Professor Lazarus (Gatiss) Before the process.

And after, talking to the Doctor and Martha.

Unfortunately it doesn’t get better. ‘The Lazarus Experiment’ shows that just because you’ve only got 45 minutes doesn’t mean you need one idea and see if you can stretch it to make a successful episode. The name is misleading, although Lazarus does appear to come back from the dead at one point, but I would have thought bringing the dead back to life was the point of the episode, yet it is all about turning back time to make the young look old.

And the guy’s name is Lazarus?

And then he changes a bit more again.

Please. There is some nice stuff with Martha’s family – we are back in a modern day setting so that’s nice. And her mother is warned about the Doctor, and this has come from Mr Saxon, a name we might have heard a couple of times so far, but now it seems Mr Saxon could be a significant character leading up to the finale. We will wait and see I guess.

It’s all very icky this episode – Mark Gatiss plays Lazarus, who is rejuvenated back to a young man (he

Most of the Jones' family.

starts off as an old man). The aged make-up sadly is rather obviously. Not bad per se, but obvious. He turns into a feral monster which really is not the best work the production team have done thus far, the face doesn’t look like Gatiss (although it might actually be him) and it’s all clearly CGI. Very quickly the story is about hunting down the monster and killing it and little else. And like ‘Timelash’ it appears to be resolved too quickly so they brought the thing back to life for another fifteen minutes of fun.

Worse still is the fact that Lazarus is a creepy old pervert. Really it’s dreadful.

2/10

The Runaway Bride, Smith and Jones & The Shakespeare Code

The Runaway Bride

Catherine Tate and the Doctor

So, Rose is gone and before the Doctor can say ‘I heart you’, there’s a new woman in the TARDIS, dressed up for a wedding. HER wedding. Yes, it’s star of the Catherine Tate show, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, the runaway bride (incidentally the title of the 2006 Christmas special). Actually, she hasn’t run away at all, she’s full of Huon particles which draw her suddenly to the TARDIS in one of the many plot issues this story faces.

We have a giant spider-thing with a lisp and a comic turn, a seriously moronic to the point of being unbelievable bride-groom Lance (played by Don Gilet), the return of pilot fish and killer Christmas trees just because it’s Christmas, and the highlight of the episode (aside from Tennant being separated from Piper) is this amazing chase down an expressway by the Doctor in the TARDIS. Now that’s the sort of thing that they could never have afforded to do back in the classic series, and it’s pretty impressive.

The Doctor’s all mopey about Rose, which is to be expected but golly I hope it doesn’t continue for too long, cause it’s gonna get old mighty quick. Donna Noble is a bolshy, opinionated and written to be stupid ginger who is pretty hard to take at times and not exactly endearing to the audience. Thank goodness this is only a one-off and she won’t be returning!

The Doctor flushes the spiders down a big plug-hole, fitting I guess although he doesn’t call himself on it which I was expecting. It’s light-hearted and a bit of fun really, not great and perhaps a little long, but enjoyable none-the-less.

7/10

Smith and Jones

Martha Jones (Freema Ageyman) centre.

The weekly blood-sucking villain

The third series begins with an introduction episode for Martha Jones, played by Freema Ageyman. Interestingly she played a small role in ‘Army of Ghosts’ before being deaded, no doubt that’s what caught the eye of Russel T Davies. She makes a good start here and kudos for Davies for going with an African-British companion for the first time EVER, not only that she’s studying to become a doctor and has wealthy parents. A whole bunch of stereotypes zapped in one episode!

A Judoon gets to work.

It’s a very solid, fun episode with strange alien creatures that look like rhinos and a hospital taking a ride to the moon with rain that falls up. We get a little look into Martha’s life via her sister, brother, mother and father, although we don’t go as deep as with Rose. Martha seems pretty enamoured with the doctor which could be an issue…

It goes to show you don’t have to have a universe-ending scenario for a successful episode of Doctor Who.

Martha's sister, Tish (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)

This has a woman assimilating human blood in her system, hiding from the Judoon (rhino creatures) in a hospital. Martha makes a good start by restarting the Doctor’s hearts and saving his life, apparently his lack of blood wasn’t that much of an issue after he had been drained.

I’m not sure there’s much else to say on this one, it’s rather very good.

9/10

The Shakespeare Code

The Globe Theatre.

This little gem was again highly enjoyable. Martha is a breath of fresh air from Rose, and of course we have William Shakespeare in this one making it already a memorable little tale. Now, it’s far from perfect and a little hard to understand. We seem to have an idea for an alien race mixed up strangely with witchcraft, which is all a little odd.

The head witch, Lilith (Christina Cole)

The idea that these creatures, Carrionites, find a certain power in the word is a great little idea, but then they were also made witches which muddies the waters. We even see one flying on a broomstick. It’s a bit like the vampires in ‘Curse of Fenric’, not sure of just how essential they were to the story.

Shakspeare (Dean Lennox Kelly)

Anyhoo, there’s a lot to like for the Shakespeare fans and Doctor Who fans, such as myself. There are a number of little Shakspeare ‘in-jokes’ if you will which are quite endearing, even if perhaps they do number just a few too many. To basically end with Martha rejecting Shakespeare because of his breath is very funny though. It’s interesting and probably a good thing that Martha’s skin-colour was mentioned but the reactions of that time period was not concentrated on (to people of African descent), as they could have made a whole episode around that issue.

This is purely a fun episode, not one to be taken all too seriously, and one that can be enjoyed on a number of levels. So is it a bit silly to have three witches as the main protagonists? Maybe. Maybe not. Doctor Who is allowed to be silly at times if it tells a good story, and this one does.

8/10