What Who Are You Currently Watching? - Goes Fourth.

[SiHart]

Last week we braved a trip to Uxarius and watched Colony in Space.

[Rob McCow]

Well, you say "Watched Colony In Space" but it didn't really have my full attention!

[Stuart Wallis]

Colony In Space doesn't seem to hold many people's attention. Sorry, what was I saying? I think I was supposed to add QED...

[Nyder]

Next on my list .... Time and the Rani. Wish me luck

[Rob McCow]

Si mentioned he wanted to watch Utopia, then said he wanted to watch Human Nature and now we're doing the whole of New Series Three. The Martha Jones Year.

Smith and Jones

Bang! The first time the new series has had to introduce a replacement companion and it hits the ground running. We're introduced to Martha's family in a contrived-but-fun multiple phone-call pile-up. Martha's family are a mixed bunch, her parents are great but we're given nothing memorable to care about for her sister and er... that guy. I can't remember whether it's her brother or her sister's boyfriend. Anyway, they're not integral to the story in the way that Rose's family were, they just bookend it to give Martha some grounding.

Straight away she bumps into the Doctor taking off his tie at her. It's a great moment, one you'll forget as the story gets going but it creates a mystery and establishes a link between the characters. Some might find it annoying because it's a little silly, but I think it works well.

So we follow Martha through her day as Mr. B. Stoker takes her and a group of medical students on a tour of the hospital looking solely at Alien Characters Who Become Important Later On. If B. Stoker was the writer, he might say things like:
"So why are we talking to this old lady with a salt deficiency?"
"Is it to establish my character?"
"No! It's so the audience will recognise her later on and we've given them clue about needing salt. Do pay attention! Now we'll go and look at the mysterious time traveller with two hearts who somehow got himself a hosptial bed."

Not to mention that Martha has already bumped into one of the leather-suited slabs on the way in. We never find out much about them, they're standard issue goons but they look interesting, they're menacing and they fit in to the hospital environment because they look like couriers. Though maybe someone should have shouted at them to take their helmets off indoors.

But there's no time for that because it's raining on the hospital and the rain is going upwards and suddenly we're on the moon! Compare this with recent episode Hell Bent, the Doctor hadn't finished his soup by this point in the story and these guys have already set up the main characters and put everyone in peril. Zip, zip, zip.

Then things get a bit hysterical. It's entirely right that if you get transported to the moon you would be frightened, but getting a bunch of extras to pull funny faces and start wailing is never going to look good on screen. So for about thirty seconds the episode becomes a mass gurn-off.

Fortunately Martha is totally unphased by it which impresses the Doctor. I don't know if he's eyeing her up as a potential companion at this point. It seems that he is, but he's not committed. They get a lovely scene together on the balcony of the hospital as the Judoon ships arrive. It's shot very interestingly, with the framing of the Doctor and Martha swapping positions as they introduce themselves.

But when the Judoon show up, he uses Martha horribly! The kiss to transfer his DNA and give him a chance to get away is pretty immoral. This might be following on from The Christmas Invasion where the Doctor has lost his sense of humanity, but it still rankles with me. The Judoon could have executed her.

The Judoon are simply wonderful. There's a great tension build-up and release when they arrive. They're huge, there's loads of them, they move well and then they take off their helmets to reveal Space Rhinos! They probe the human with a scary blue light and just when you think they're about to start shooting everyone... they pull out a Space Sharpie Pen and put a crude X on the guy's hand. It's pure Russell T Davies. It doesn't undermine the threat of the Judoon either, they're still capable of killing everyone but they're just not doing it at the moment.

Meanwhile Anne Reid is giving 100% as the Plasmavore. The scenes with the straw make my skin crawl, but they are exactly the sort of thing that kids can copy at home or in the playground (hopefully harmlessly!). So much more fun to have a non-gothic vampire roaming about the place.

There's loads of running and the Doctor gets irradiated while zapping one of the slabs. The mucking about with radiation is weird and silly but fun. For a man trying to jiggle all the radiation in his body into his shoe, David Tennant plays it fairly straight.

There's so much humour throughout the episode, like Martha frantically digging out the operator's manual for the X-Ray machine as the Slab is bursting through the door, or the 'Planet Zovirax' gag, which is probably completely irrelevant now but was great at the time. I think the humour helps to give the RTD era it's zing. If you laugh it breaks down your defences and heightens your emotions, so you're more ready to feel the tension or break down in tears on cue.

We're right back to running down corridors though as the Judoon catch up with the Doctor and Martha. Anne Reid sets up her Magnetic Overload which flashes up on screen several times and the Doctor pretends to have bunions.

Martha has to save the Doctor's life by giving him CPR after the Plasmavore has drained his blood. She'll be doing this sort of thing a lot, I think. She's also the one who forces them to scan the Plasmavore again and reveals the alien DNA. So it's a team effort between the Doctor and Martha that saves the day. It's a bit like Rose, only it's a more complex and satisfying resolution.

Although it's not all satisfying. The Judoon conveniently return the hospital to Earth just as the air runs out (strangely represented by an oxygen cylinder running to zero, although it's the air in the bubble that's the problem? And how come there's still electricity? Why is the TARDIS bigger on the inside? etc). It also bugs / amuses me that the Hope Hospital is located right next to Big Ben where I know it isn't. And that all the reaction and reverse shots are in Cardiff somewhere.

Finally, we have Martha joining the TARDIS as her family implodes around her. I'm going to have to assume her family is like that all the time, because Martha seems unaffected by it all. Then again, she has just been to the moon and back.

So she hops on board the TARDIS for one (ONE!) trip through time and space and the Doctor starts his campaign of impossible cruelty towards her. Martha pretends she's not interested but she is. I'm sure there is a good story to be told about unrequited love, but I think in Martha's case it just belittles her. From now on, she's the companion who wasn't as good as Rose. It's one thing for the audience to think it, but quite another for the show to come out and say it. Still they're on their way and having fun, so it'll all be fine, eh?

Next week! Witches.

[Rob McCow]

Damnit and I thought I'd write a short paragraph. OK.

The Shakespeare Code

Great energy, love the evil witches packing the ham in like a three-woman spam-tinning factory, Freema is brilliant, the pace never lets up, the Carrionite monsters look superb, the lighting and atmosphere is spot-on.

But my word all the Shakespeare lines (you can use that one!) go KLONK. That and Expelliarmus. KLONK. To be or not to be. KLONK KLONK KLONK. Argh.

The whole story is also The Unquiet Dead v.2.

End.

[Stuart Wallis]

And just when you think Shakespeare couldn't get mentioned one more time this week...

Hope Hospital is next to the Houses of Parliament - you can't see it because it's under the Thames!

"We're on the bloody Moon!" My favourite line from the story.

[Rob McCow]

"We're on the bloody Moon!" My favourite line from the story.

Yeah. Martha's great, isn't she?

Also, someone should have said that in Space 1999 at some point.

[Stuart Wallis]

Should've said it every week - make a running gag of it - and their nearly visiting Planet Luton!

[Leah Betts]

If Martha was a cyberman, she'd have more emotional range than Freema...

[Dirk Gently]

[SiHart]

Gridlock last night. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

[Andrew Curnow]

I'm also rewatching S3 (my fave of the Tennants) of a Sunday morning with breakfast. Gridlock is, as you say Si, brilliant, and still very moving... And Tennant talking about Gallifrey at the end tops it off brilliantly.

Today - Daleks in Manhattan!!

[Nyder]

I'm also doing S3 of course - Blink today! Doctor-lite episodes tend not to be my favourite, but I like the way he's peppered throughout this episode. The Weeping Angels were never scarier than this debut - it was a law of diminishing returns after this!

[Nyder]

Utopia today!

S3 really hit a purple patch with Human / Family and this. Derek Jacobi is just stunning in his portrayals of both Professor Yana and the other fella And John Barrowman was never better as Captain Jack than he was here. Wonderful epic viewing for a Bank Holiday Monday


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[SiHart]

Last night, The Lazarus Experiment. I remain incredibly fond of this one.

[Andrew Curnow]

Me too, Si. It would have been a great (if slower) Pertwee I always think, I can certainly imagine him at the demonstration party mocking Lazarus and scoffing the sandwiches!!

[Stuart Wallis]

"Really Jo! Sausage sandwiches with no brown sauce, and warm Asda lager! I've seen better catering supplied by Ogrons!"

[Nyder]

Watched / listened to The Crusade. Hmmmm not terribly impressed - Marco Polo was far better. I'm on more familiar territory now with Black Orchid. It's Charleston time once more, and The Doctor is in a silk dressing down. Topping!!


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[Stuart Wallis]

I don't remember Mr. Keith in the story!

Ah...

[Leah Betts]

It's been pointed out that DW only has old characters in reunion specials that the general audience would be familiar with - hence Jamie and Zoe in 5Docs because the British audience were familiar with them from "The Five Faces of Doctor Who" repeat season.

[Stuart Wallis]

I suppose having the first one, the Famous One (SJS) and the current one in the same story would bear that out. Well it might if Caroline John weren't also in it - perhaps that was because Katy wasn't available, and Caroline was the only 3rd Doc companion left after John Levene went to the US. (Having yates and Benton or Jo would've made more sense, but there you go.)

Having watched the first four episodes last weekend, I must get back to watching Invasion Of The Dinosaurs. Decent enough, only let down by the effects.

[Leah Betts]

Invasion Of The Dinosaurs works better in the novelisation. I don't know why Malcolm Hulke is underrated compared to Holmes or Dicks.

[Nyder]

The Ark in Space

Ep1 is far drearier than I remembered - and Harry is coming across as a right ..... well ...... imbecile

[Stuart Wallis]

The Ark in Space

Ep1 is far drearier than I remembered

You realise that's considered heresy in certain circles - mostly concentric ones.