Rate And Discuss 3.1: Smith And Jones

[Pip Madeley]

Well, here we go, the final poll results for Smith And Jones are:



Average rating: 7.35 out of 10!

[Rob McCow]

Who's vote ended up floating about to the right of the graph?

Hmm - 8/10 leaps out as a big winner here. Hurrah!

[Andrew Curnow]

My old geography teacher would be very pleased with you, Pip - he always drummed into us the importance of adding a title to our graphs, and of labelling the axes. Good work!!!

P.S. Good work on the new addition to the site too, with contemporary opinions.

[Pip Madeley]

My old geography teacher would be very pleased with you, Pip - he always drummed into us the importance of adding a title to our graphs, and of labelling the axes. Good work!!!

P.S. Good work on the new addition to the site too, with contemporary opinions.

Ta Andrew, it's painstaking but I feel it's worth it

[Andrew Curnow]

Totally off the point, but just as a matter of interest can those 'old opinions' pages be accessed from the front page of the website. I was just hunting for them, and although, in the words of A-Ha, I was hunting high and low, I couldnae find them anywhere.

[Pip Madeley]

Totally off the point, but just as a matter of interest can those 'old opinions' pages be accessed from the front page of the website. I was just hunting for them, and although, in the words of A-Ha, I was hunting high and low, I couldnae find them anywhere.

Here we go:

http://planetskaro.org.uk/creative/reviews/index.php

Second down

[Andrew Curnow]

Oh yes - well no wonder I didn't spot that huge banner leading me right to it...

[Rob McCow]

Does anyone mind if I just... ? No I'm sure you don't.

mith 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.

[Nyder]

I'm sure I've read that somewhere before


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