Rate & Discuss 4.5: The Poison Sky

[Pip Madeley]

As the Sontarans choke the Earth, the Doctor battles to keep both Martha and Donna alive...



Rate and discuss the episode after transmission - no spoilers of any kind until then please!

[Larry]

well the trailers are looking fantastic..

[Andrew Curnow]

"Sontarans you will go on my first whistle; UNIT forces you will go on my second whistle..."

[Zbigniev Hamson]

After reading the radio times previews, expect more controversial low numbers from me later this evening

[Pip Madeley]

It's not really controversial anymore, we know you hate new Doctor Who.

[Stuart Wallis]

All I know is, if the Sontarans do in The Cribbins, RTD gets it!

[Dirk Gently]

The Brig is stuck in Peru!

"Are you my Mummy?"

Rose calling for the Doctor on the monitor!

How did the Doctor's hand end up in the TARDIS when it's in Torchwood HQ?

Not a bad episode but that ending with the sky on fire was total boll***s! It would feed on the Oxygen in the atmosphere surely? It'd kill the planet as surely as the gas was.

As such I'm giving this 6/10.

[Lord President]

Loved it! Big, bold, violent, emotional and funny!

Sontarans, 2 Marthas, Unit kicking arse, Cribbins, Tennant giving it his all, I even felt the need to cough along with the population of Earth!

Only marred by the obvious self-sacrifice of Rattigan!

I especially loved the flash of Rose on the TARDIS monitor and 'Are You My Mummy'!

8/10

[Paul Clement]

A poor resolution to the story with some rather glaring plotholes in it.

Did everyone else spot Rose when the Doctor first switched the scanner on the Sontarans?

[Captain Tancredi]

Due to badly miscalculating the time my dinner was going to take, I probably saw every other scene until about 15 minutes in. Will try again tomorrow.

[WhiteCrow]

I really enjoyed that, good fun, my son loved it too.

My first impression was 9/10.

I've had a good think about this, and wonder why I don't want to go one further and give in 10/10. I can't think of a reason why, so I'm going to give it full marks.

Generally I've enjoyed this a lot, hard to remember the last episode I just really enjoyed like this - probably when the Cybermen came back.

So 10/10 it is.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

No-where near as bad as I expected. I would give it a 4, but I enjoyed it more than The Adipose Invasion so I'd better give it 5 to be consistent.

Predictably I hated the "Are you my Mummy?" line, not so much for the pointless contintuity itself, but more for the fact that the Doctor comically referencing a sad walking-dead child that he actually found rather tragic and frightening at the time rather out of character. Not to mention rather misplace and untimely seeing as he was in the middle of some military preparations that he had issues with at the time, and was surrounded by people to whom the joke would have meant nothing anyway. Almost as if he momentarily stopped being a character in a fictional universe and became a writer making a little joke with the audience, oddly enough.

Much better than last week though, and better than it promised to be, but still a shame that the character/performance of General Staal was wasted on this as he was the best Sontaran yet (apart from the chanting).

[WhiteCrow]

Ooh and next weeks episode looks controversial. I'm almost thinking of sneaking onto Outpost Gallifrey to hear the sound of a thousand die hard "old school" Who fans screaming in the agony they deserve.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

It's not really controversial anymore, we know you hate new Doctor Who.

Very true, but this isn't anything new so I'm still surprised it was controversial last week

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Ooh and next weeks episode looks controversial. I'm almost thinking of sneaking onto Outpost Gallifrey to hear the sound of a thousand die hard "old school" Who fans screaming in the agony they deserve.

I don't really get this because the Doctor having a Grand Daughter is about as "old school" as you can get, so I'm not sure why him having a daughter should be controversial at all.

[Lord President]

Not a bad episode but that ending with the sky on fire was total boll***s! It would feed on the Oxygen in the atmosphere surely? It'd kill the planet as surely as the gas was.

...although The Doctor did later say that he had reprogrammed the device for Sontaran air, so presumably it was programmed to burn the 'smog' while leaving the oxygen behind!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

and also to redefine the concept of "burning" while he was at it then

[Stephen Morgan]

Welllll.......... that wasn't too bad was it.

Watching Confidential though, it struck me that Colin Baker wouldn't need too much make up to make him look like a Sontaran though.

[WhiteCrow]

I don't really get this because the Doctor having a Grand Daughter is about as "old school" as you can get, so I'm not sure why him having a daughter should be controversial at all.

No I don't really get some Doctor Who fans either. They're a miserable lot really, and never happy! They'll turn me back into a Trekkie before to long, and I'll have to repent from saying Enterprise was crap.

[Dirk Gently]

...although The Doctor did later say that he had reprogrammed the device for Sontaran air, so presumably it was programmed to burn the 'smog' while leaving the oxygen behind!

It was a flame, fire needs oxygen to happen.

[Pip Madeley]

How did the Doctor's hand end up in the TARDIS when it's in Torchwood HQ?

Surely you watched Utopia and Last of the Time Lords, Tim?

I'll add my thoughts later, but on the whole I was happy with that, worth an 8 in my book. Particularly good cliffhanger and I'm very much looking forward to next week - Georgia Moffett is well cute.

[Dirk Gently]

I'm trying my best to forget it!

[Martin Curnow]

Great stuff. So many great bits in it.

Are you my mummy?

Back of the neck!

Superb.

[Andy Frankham]

How did the Doctor's hand end up in the TARDIS when it's in Torchwood HQ?

In context of Who, I'll not answer since Pip has. HOWEVER... the big question is 'how did it get in Jack's backpack in "Utopia" when it was clearly seen on the desk in the final shot of Torchwood's "End of Days"?'

But back onto tonight's episode. A fab conclusion to a good story, I thought. Loved pretty much all of it. Nice to know Sir Alistair is still alive, and, it would appear, very much a part of UNIT. Mark my words, he will return to the series sooner or later. They've been slowly building up to his return since 'Aliens of London'.

Next week is going to be so fab. Can't wait for the dire hard old skool to wail like banshees. *lol*

[Andrew Curnow]

I would just say that although I love new Who as much as the old, I'm still not sold on the need for the Doctor to suddenly find a daughter - I'll happily eat my words next week, but don't just assume it to be an easy test as to whether you're a 'with-it' fan or a 'die-hard old school' one.

But back to tonight, and although I enjoyed it, I didn't enjoy it as much as last week's:

-Christopher Ryan's Staal didn't get as much time, which is a huge shame, and seemed to be mainly reduced to "Attack!" style close-ups.

-It seemed awfully lucky that Rattigan's agreement with the Sontarans was to get a new world, because that meant that he had an academy full of terraforming equipment. I know, I know, a lot of stories have that kind of 'deus ex machina' solution, but this time it didn't feel bedded into the story well enough to emerge naturally. I think we ought to have learnt of Rattigan's agreement last week, so that it was already well established.

-Seemed a bit odd to make a point of Donna deciding to go with the Doctor at the start of the episode, only for her to then skulk off to the TARDIS.

-We really, really should have had a final scene between the Doctor and the UNIT commander. Having made so much of the dispute between the two, there should have been some kind of pay-off between them (rather than the absurd kiss - sorry, it just didn't work at all for me). It seems the one scene that really should have been there - there's lots of mileage, from the UNIT guy admitting that the Doctor's approach worked, to the fact that the Doctor did eventually just blow all the Sontarans up, and even some acknowledgement from the Doctor that the UNIT guy did actually rise to the occasion (ie, got the guns working, took the fight to the Sontarans, etc, etc).

Having said that, I didn't NOT enjoy it, but I don't think Helen Raynor's scripts seem quite as tight and (perhaps oddly, since she's the only female writer on the series so far) seem curiously unemotional, as most of the others.

On the other hand, I did like a lot of other stuff, such as Donna's Mum's moment of axe-wielding glory; the quick flash of Rose; the phone call between the Doctor and Donna which worked for me because Donna is just so real - being scared and not wanting to do it is exactly how most of us would be I think; and Bernard Cribbins in his last scene with Donna was just absolutely heartbreaking.

And on the "Are you my Mummy?" debate, Curnow Towers definitely enjoyed it, with us all laughing hugely.