Day Three Hundred and Fifty-four - Dr.Who: Series 4, Episodes 5-11, "Double Duty Diablo Days!"

I'm going to do my best to hit the end of Doctor Who... if that means doing six or seven episodes every other night, then so be it! Tonight's binge of Tennant and Tate (and Agyeman... and a little Piper) takes us from Modern London to several different far flung futures and the somewhat recent past, where alien and human threats abound!

Starting off is a two-parter where Martha Jones recalls The Doctor to Earth to help her and U.N.I.T. investigate a GPS/CleanAir system that can kill. It seems that a wunderkind is teamed up with the Sontarans to war with humanity and it's up to The Doctor and Donna to save the day. I'd add Martha to that list, but she gets kidnapped rather early on and has to be rescued from her evil doppelganger self.

The Sontarans are actually a pretty fun villain, despite their "back of the neck" weak spot. I rather like their martial sensibilities, even if their ultimate plan goes against their strict codes and their tactics are laughable at best. I mean, honestly, half the stuff The Doctor tricks them into should've been easily avoided by their superior tactical minds. Instead it's just simple action/reaction from them. Still, nice to see U.N.I.T. again after all the Saxon fascism from the end of last season.

After modern times are saved, The Doctor, Martha, and Donna find themselves in the middle of a human/alien conflict fought by generation after generation of clones who cannot remember the true origins of their war, it being shrouded in the mysteries of one of the biggest games of telephone in such a short time span ever. I say that because Donna figures out that the war has only been going on for seven days. Seven days of generations of clones spawning, dying, and being reborn with the story getting more abstract as it goes. This is happening on BOTH sides, mind you, not just with the humans.

This episode is a standout due to the fact that the cloning machine makes a haploid clone of The Doctor, which just so happens to be female... and is David Tennant's wife in real life (granted, they didn't get married until later). I rather enjoyed watching The Doctor first reject his "daughter" then grow to love her only to lose her to death. While her resurrection is a bit too convenient, I do like that it happened after the TARDIS left so that she wasn't an add-on companion and was off to have her own adventures.

Moving on, after dropping Martha back in her own time, Donna and The Doctor go back almost a century to the age of Agatha Christie and a murder mystery dinner party high on the melodrama and sporting a giant alien wasp-creature. Cute little nods are made to Donna and The Doctor inspiring Agatha towards works she hadn't yet written by quoting titles and characters from her unpenned books. Kind of a paradox, but it sort of resolves itself by the end of her episode with a mindwipe. While I wasn't that impressed with the murder mystery itself (or the cheesy revelation sequence), having The Doctor and Agatha both being clever in tandem was entertaining.

Phew... still several episodes left to go... starting with another two-parter which introduces MY FAVORITE WHOVIAN CHARACTER OF ALL TIME: Doctor River Song!

Oh, how I love River Song (and her actress, Alex Kingston)... a great character, a great actress, and a great concept in story telling, River Song is an intimate companion to The Doctor who is running on timelines almost opposite to his. Their first meeting from The Doctor's perspective is her last as, spoilers, she dies saving both him and thousands of trapped souls in a planet-sized library that is being guarded/hunted by the Vashta Nerada, a species of mite-like carnivores that hide in the shadows... well, are the shadows, really... and begin to kill and impersonate the members of Doctor Song's archaeological team.

River Song is probably the most intriguing character I've encountered in time travel scifi save, perhaps, for Delenn in Babylon 5. She accepts The Doctor as one who, naturally, has known and trusted him forever, and can both cater to his needs and push him in the right directions when he needs it, and this is all evident from these two short episodes almost immediately. I very much look forward to the rest of her appearances.

Finally, after the triumph and tragedy at the Library, The Doctor and Martha take a vacation on a trendy future tourist locale on the planet Midnight, where travel is restricted to closed box rolligons with shuttered windows and sealed doors. This is mostly a Doctor episode where he and a bunch of vacationers get trapped with an alien menace which tests the bounds of their charity and humanity by preying on their baser, paranoid natures.

To describe it, I'd call it a bottle episode as most of the episode takes place on a single small set with just The Doctor and six or so other people. The actually alien threat, itself, is boring and gimmicky, but the panic that it inspires in the passengers and how quickly they turn on one another is pretty decent. I can't say I'm happy with the Driver/Mechanic just being dropped halfway through the episode for convenience sake (and after they'd JUST been introduced, too), but the human drama that takes up the majority of the epi is decent.

Keep an eye out for quick cameos by Billy Piper's Rose in the backgrounds. I forgot to mention, but she showed up for a second during Donna's reintroduction and has been on monitors and the like just out of The Doctor's sight for several episodes now.

While I'm not won over yet (though, dancing pretty close thanks to Alex Kingston), I can definitely say that the quality of the series has gone up over the continuum I've watched. Now, let's see if we can plow through the rest of Series 4 on Sunday (as I need something non-Whovian and Christmasy for Saturday).

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Fifty-two - Dr.Who: Series 4, Episodes 1-4, "There's no such thing as a peaceful Christmas in Whoville."

Martha is done and The Doctor is once again alone... for a moment.

It's almost feels like, if it's a Christmas episode, then a new companion is going to be introduced. Last time it was one-off companion Donna and her sham wedding. Before that it was Rose being assaulted by robotic Santas. This time, it's SPAAAAACCCCE TITAAAANIIIICCCC... and another one-off/almost-companion in the form of a down on her luck waitress named Astrid who is serving drinks on the maiden voyage of the doomed spaceliner.

After leaving Martha (and having a webisode adventure with the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) that is NOT available on Netflix), The Doctor needs a bit of vacation so he hops aboard the Titanic, which is traveling above Earth at Christmastime. It took me a bit to realize that we were in modern times on an alien ship with a lot of folks who look human but aren't. Still, the Poseidon Adventure recreation that The Doctor, Astrid, and several passengers that he's interacted with is pretty fun. I also like the small role for Geoffrey Palmer (whom most folks might remember from As Time Goes By or Tomorrow Never Dies) as the ship's duplicitous captain.

I wasn't exactly thrilled with the forced "cyborg-racism" angle that crops up in several places. There's not enough time to lay a proper foundation and the two characters it directly manifests with are disappointing to say the least. I did like Astrid's solution and her almost-resurrection, but everything else, from the other passengers to the Host, was just boring.

Moving on, after Astrid buys it saving the ship, The Doctor stays in modern times to investigate the Adipose... a cute little enemy which is also being investigated by last Christmas' companion, Donna (Catherine Tate). Seems she actually got the adventure bug despite her protests last time and is looking for The Doctor, snooping out the unusual in an attempt to find him... and find him she does, just in time for both of them to stumble on an alien nanny who is using human fad diets to raise alien babies (contrary to universal law), who chooses to just kill a million humans instead of being exposed for the criminal she is. This leads to a chase sequence and MacGuffin theatrics, as per the norm, and Donna joining as a regular companion.

The Adipose are silly and cheap in terms of their CGI, and I was really expecting quite a bit more from the reporter instead of her just constantly being caught and tied up or left that way for a rehash of her "you're not just leaving me like this" joke, but Donna and the Doctor pantomiming from different sides of the villain's monologue was pretty entertaining.

From there it's off to ancient Rome, or so they think, as it's really Pompeii, only a day or so before the infamous eruption that consumed the city. There are soothsayers that can read truths and see through time who are working for a cult that The Doctor has met before (or so he says, I don't remember them from older Who epis). Anyways, the soothsayers are working at the behest of fire aliens who are living in the mountain and are using their proxies to build tech for their eventual invasion of the planet. Boring, but it gives Donna another chance to act as The Doctor's conscience, a role that I very much approve of.

The ash demons themselves were rather boring, and I was hoping for something more interesting when it came to the stone transformations of the oracles... especially since the sisterhood had a gesture that covered their eyes, which made me think of a Weeping Angel connection that would've been fun. Alas, just a third (and fourth, I guess) eye reference as they used their inner sight instead of their actual vision.

The last episode was a trip to the far-flung future and the home planet of the Ood (whom we last saw in the thrall of Satan). It seems the corporation that is exploiting them as slave labor is having trouble dealing with a strain of rabid Ood who have glowing red eyes and are violent for some unknown reason. The Doctor and Donna investigate and find out that the humans are abusing the Ood and their large hive brain, but the Ood are fighting back against their masters.

Honestly, the whole "brain in their hand" gimmick is actually pretty interesting, even if the giant CGI brain that is being held captive is boring as all get out. Sigma's subtle poisoning of the CEO, Klineman, is another nice plot point that, for once, pays off well... and in a Doctor Who episode, at that. Amazing.

With only two weeks left to go in the year, I don't know if I'll make it to the end of Series 6, but I'll give it my best go on alternating days. We'll see if I can make it without doubling up.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Forty-three - Dr.Who: Series 3, Episodes 1-4, "KITTIES!"

Billy Piper is gone and now is the age of Donna... wait, Martha!

The first episode of Series 3 picks up exactly where Rose's last farewell left us, with Catherine Tate showing up in a wedding dress in the middle of the TARDIS for no good reason other than that it's Christmas time... and she's about to unknowingly get married to a traitorous spider-thrall who is beguiled by the Racnoss Empress.

Apparently the Racnoss, a species of hominid spiders who terrorized the galaxy billions of years ago, actually created the Earth as a timeship where they would lay dormant until the time was right and the Empress would return to them from the far reaches of the universe and reawaken the brood... with the help of MacGuffin particles that Donna (Tate) has been force-fed by her fiance. The Doctor is there to save the day, though, and all is well that ends well... save that The Doctor is a bit more mean and mercenary now that he's been separated from Rose.

Donna, of course, declines to follow The Doctor (this season), and instead he manages to pick up the plucky and intelligent med student Martha Jones while investigating a hospital that has been building-napped (along with its entire complement of patients and doctors) to the Moon by a group of alien mercenaries who have been hired to track down an alien... and, guess what, The Doctor just happens to be an alien (not the right one, mind you, but still) and manages to get in their crosshairs... on the Moon!

After dodging the Plasmivore and the rhinoceros-aliens, the Judoon, Martha and The Doctor travel to Elizabethan England and meet Shakespeare, himself, who is tangled up in a plot by word witches called Carrionites (who act rather like the three crones from Macbeth) who as using his plays and the architecture of The Globe Theatre to attempt to summon their trapped sisters and unleash a hell on earth.

Saving the day, once again (but running from Queen Elizabeth, who apparently knows The Doctor unkindly), they obscond to New New York (where he and Rose fought zombies and cat nuns) where Martha is kidnapped by friendly carjackers and The Doctor finds that the survivors of humanity (and cat-kind) are trapped in the underground motorway... and have been for over twenty years, not knowing that the outside world has fallen victim to a plague.

I think I'm going to spend a lot of time today gushing over this episode (titled - "Gridlock") for two reasons. One, it features the return of, and final call for, The Face of Boe (whom rumor has it is actually a hyper-evolved incarnation of Captain Jack Harkness)... and, two, KITTIES!

The first hovercar that The Doctor gets into is helmed by a mixed species couple who just had a litter of kittens. If kitties crying "mama" isn't the single most adorable scene that I have ever had the pleasure of watching (and re-watching) on Doctor Who, I will eat my hat. My GOD they are precious... and only there for a few seconds, but still... AMAZINGLY ADORBS!

It's nice to see Boe again, as he was a fun bit of mystery and intrigue that popped up several times during the first two seasons and the lore regarding the possibility that he's Cap'n Jack is a lovely bit of geeky goodness. The fact that he's yet another force for the all convenient plot MacGuffins is almost forgivable. I could see him using his immortality energies to sustain the motorways, but am annoyed that he's credited with saving Novice Hame via "his gases."

Yes, both notions are so utterly ridiculous that they should be equally headache-inducing to me, but I find I can take one over the other quite easily.

It's also rather funny that I don't get bent over the self-replicating fuel. Ahem, HEL-LOOOOO. That's not the way energy works, people... stop handwaving away the laws of entropy and thermodynamics just because you don't want to spend thought-sweat on better explanations. I mean, honestly, with the Macra right underneath them, why couldn't part of the motorway's economy be a guild of secret Macra-waste harvesters who never tell the rest of the convoy whats below the fast-lane? Yup, I'm a genius. Pay me, Davies.

Keep an ear out for early references to season arc villain Saxon. Almost every episode tonight has a mention of him in some aside.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~