“Kids, they never listen.”—Donna NobleThe runaway TARDIS transports the Doctor, Donna and Martha to the planet Messaline. Upon exiting he time machine, human soldiers apprehend them and create a woman almost instantaneously by using the Doctors DNA -the Doctor's Daughter, eventually named Jenny. The reason for this instant creation is to help resupply troops for a war between the humans and the Hath, fish-type beings. During an initial Hath attack, Martha is separated from her companions and captured by the Hath. The separated group each discover that the was has waged for generations over something called “The Source” or the 'breath of life' as described by General Cobb, the leader of the human forces. The Doctor and Martha each inadvertently uncover hidden passageways that lead to The Source's location. Cobb imprisons Doctor/Donna and Jenny when the Doctor/Donna protest Cobb's plans (dreams) of killing all the Hath once the power of The Source is harnessed...
read more
Picking up from the cliffhanger, ATMOS systems would-wide are out of control and spewing forth the Sontaran poison gas. Donna's grandfather is rescued by Sylvia via an ax to the windshield. Back at UNIT, the clone of Martha has been busy helping the Sontarans with the gas attack. The Doctor asks Donna to head back to the TARDIS for refuge and she receives her very own key to the time machine. Unfortunately for Donna, the Martha clone has the TARDIS teleported onto the Sontaran spaceship with Donna inside! During a communication with General Staal, the Doctor secretly signals Donna about the TARDIS's phone. Luke Rattigan's students decide to abandon ship —apparently, they'd rather be with their families than starting a new civilization with Rattigan. Against the Doctor's wishes, UNIT orders a world-wide nuclear strike against the Sontaran vessel; however, again, the Martha clone secretly intervenes and shuts down the launch via her hacked PDA and repeats the process every time...
read more
Doctor Who - Season 3 courtesy BBC Video
This past November 6th saw the DVD release of Doctor Who - The Complete 3rd Season in North America, culminating in an epic three-part story where The Doctor (David Tennant) had battled, and seemingly lost the Earth to, one of his longest-running enemies.The advance material and the included booklet for the DVD release both said that the season finale, "The Last of the Time Lords", would include a cast commentary track by David Tennant ("The Doctor"), Freema Agyeman ("Martha Jones") and John Barrowman ("Capt. Jack Harkness" of Torchwood). However, that wasn't the commentary track fans found on the release when it arrived! Instead there was a podcast, which had previously been released on the internet, recorded by show producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson.Naturally fans felt upset, especially when it became known that the proper cast commentary had been included in the U.K.'s DVD release of the same episode. Our own Gord Lacey turned to BBC Video for an explan...
read more
“Martha Jones, you saved the world.”— The DoctorRight then! Here we are at the end of the third season of the new Doctor Who series and what a ride it has been to get here. First the Dalek raged war upon the human race, followed by the Cybermen (and Dalek) also raging war upon the human race. Who else could possibly top that duo of evil and wage war upon the human race again? The Master, that’s who! And who exactly is needed to help put an end to the Master’s reign of terror? A potential doctor: one Martha Jones.One year has passed since the events in the previous episode. The Doctor, Martha’s family and Captain Jack are all still prisoners of the Master on the flying aircraft carrier Valiant. During this time, the Master with the help of his "children," the Toclafane, have conquered and enslaved the Earth. Labor camps have been set up with the purpose of building a fleet of ships and devices capable of decimating the universe in the process of setting ...
read more
"This country has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs right now is... a doctor." — Prime Minister Harold Saxon (aka the Master)Since this episode is the (almost) culmination of all the clues, hints and cause/effects from many previous episodes of this season and prior (also from Torchwood), I decided to resort to a quick summary of the episode and then launch into my patented stream-of-consciousness observations. So here goes....The Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack all escape the Futurekind from last week’s episode, "Utopia," via Jack’s previously defective Vortex Manipulator (The Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver comes in handy, doesn’t it?) and end up in 21st-century England searching for the Master. The TARDIS was reprogrammed by the Doctor before the Master TARDIS-napped it into only being able to travel between the last two destinations, which were 21st-century ...
read more
"Listen! Your life could depend on this: Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink." — The DoctorDuring the first half of this episode, I really had no idea what to make of it. It seemed more like an episode of the X-Files or even Torchwood. In fact, upon further reflection, I seem to recall two episodes from the Doctor Who universe that were similar in the sense that secondary characters were brought to the limelight (over the main cast): Doctor Who Season 2's "Love and Monsters" and Torchwood Season 1's "Random Shoes." Both episodes were some of the best of their respective seasons, and this episode, "Blink," is no different.The concept is that creatures called the Weeping Angels, or Lonely Assassins as they were called in the past, kill you ("kill you nicely" as the Doctor put it) by sending you into the past, where you live out your life and eventually die. In th...
read more
"Who am I then, nothing? I am just a story?" — John Smith (aka the Doctor)Once upon a time, there was a man named John Smith. He had an ordinary job, did ordinary things; he lived an ordinary life. But his dreams were anything but ordinary as he dreamt of the fantastic and wondrous — of people, places and things not familiar and yet ever so. So his life continued like this for many years and he was content. Being ordinary meant he would be taken aback when things would intrude upon his path, as was the case when he fell in love with the school matron, Joan. Of course, being an ordinary person who never experienced love, he tried his best to deal with the situation the best way he knew how: He took his sweet time acting on his feelings. Although this was something new to him, it seemed that this feeling of love would eventually fit in nicely with the life he had made for himself. Alas, his ordinary life was thrown askew for a second time when one day his favorite servant, M...
read more
"I sometimes think how magical life would be if stories like this were true." — John Smith (aka the Doctor)The show’s creators have come up with an ingenious storyline for this episode (setting up the events for Part 2 next week): The Doctor and Martha are pursued by dangerous aliens who can follow them anywhere through time and space. The Doctor comes up with a plan to change himself into a human (via a very painful process) and hide his Timelord essence in a device camouflaged into looking like a pocket watch. They travel to Earth in the year 1913 to hide and await the deaths of the short-lived aliens. The Doctor’s memory is erased in the process (also stored in the watch device) and he assumes the identity of a schoolteacher of the time period, with Martha being a servant of his. As things would turn out, the Doctor was not able to think of all the various contingencies that would arise as a result of this and Martha has the challenge of trying to suss it all out.O...
read more
"The following takes place between the year 2007 and five billion and twenty-four."The first thing I thought before the opening credits was: “Yay! Finally! An episode that isn’t set on Earth… again.” Of course the majority of the characters in the episode are human (not counting the Doctor or the living star organism), so I’m not sure if this counts as a non-Earth-based episode. Whatever the case may be, the episode has a very similar feel to the Doctor Who two-parter, “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satin Pit,” except it’s filled with the frenetic energy of the TV show 24, which the episode pays homage to (considering that for the most part, the show happens in "real time" and that 42 reversed is 24).I fully expected the Doctor to do some incredible and death-defying feats in order to save the day, and I wasn’t disappointed. Off the top of my head the Doctor is able to come up with a plan to save the ship’s engines; he di...
read more
"I'm old enough to know that a longer life isn't always a better one. In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle. Tired of losing everyone that matters to you. Tired of watching everything turn to dust. If you live long enough... the only certainty left is that you'll end up alone." — The DoctorSo we have yet another episode set on present-day Earth and, sadly, also one of my least favorite episodes this season (which means I have little to say about it). I'm not saying that it's completely worthless. To the contrary, there are many things to like about it. It's just that I don't believe they gel together to produce an episode on the high standards that we have been used to in the past three seasons of this revival.To briefly sum up the story: The Doctor returns Martha to present-day Earth to a few hours after she first left with him. Just as he is about to leave her there, he hears a report on the news about some experiment and he decides to investigate. As it turns...
read more
