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It begins with a wedding. Donna (Catherine Tate) is walking up the aisle in her wedding dress, on her father’s arm. She’s clearly very much looking forward to being married, but suddenly she disappears… and ends up on the tardis. The tenth doctor (David Tennant) is bewildered as this should be impossible, and the two have a bit of an argument…
It’s a remarkably tense episode, in my view, with an alien that could lead to nightmares, the empress of the racnoss. And the references to Christmas are rather scanty, although there are a few light-hearted moments to punctuate the tension. The Santa robots of the series two Christmas special appear again, as this begins a year later, on Christmas Eve. I knew that Donna was one of the tenth doctor’s travelling companions, but she doesn’t accept his invitation in this episode, which seems to have been a one-off.
The first official episode of the series, ‘Smith and Jones’ introduces Martha (Freema Agyeman) as Martha Jones, a trainee doctor whose hospital unexpectedly ends up on the moon. The Doctor is a patient who knows something strange is going on. Martha saves his life, and he offers her just one trip in the tardis to the past, to convince her that he really does travel in time.
‘The Shakespeare Code’ is the second episode, where the Doctor and Martha travel to Elizabethan England and a production of a Shakespeare play that isn’t going as the author expects. It’s a bit creepy, but overall a light-hearted episode with some humour, and more than one nod to the Harry Potter series. I always like the episodes set in real historic periods.
When they solve the problems and return to the tardis, they travel a long way into the future. ‘Gridlock’ sees the Doctor and Martha travelling to ‘New Earth’, where just about everyone is trapped in a huge traffic jam. They haven’t been stuck for hours, but, in may cases, months or even years. And attempts to go in the ‘fast track’ are doomed…
Episodes four and five are a two-parter featuring the daleks, one of my least liked of the alien races. Just four daleks remain after the time war, and they seem to be looking to the future, trying to integrate better with humanity. But daleks are built for hatred, and they care nothing for the people they hijack to be part of their purposes. These were good episodes, although there are a lot of casualties.
Episode six is, on the surface, a bit lighter, but it’s also very thought-provoking. The doctor takes Martha home, just a day after she left. And it looks as though it will be ‘goodbye’, although she feels devastated. But the Doctor happens to hear something on television, and this prompts him to investigate. We meet Martha’s mother and sister, and the idealistic Dr Lazarus who believes he has found the secret to eternal youth - or, at least, to reducing his age. But at what cost?
I didn’t like episode seven, called ‘42’. The Doctor and Martha arrive on a spaceship which is hurtling towards the sun. There’s quite an interesting underlying storyline, but I found it very stressful as the time gradually clicks down, and the characters have to race through doors, solving codes, or rush around making adjustments to the controls. Too much fast action and stress for my tastes, and I closed my eyes several times so as not to be distracted by the rapid visuals.
On the other hand, I did like the two-part story of episodes eight and nine, set mainly in a school. The first time we saw this, we realised just how good an actor David Tennant is, managing flawlessly to portray himself in two different personas. There are some quite creepy parts of these episodes, but it’s primarily character-based and I liked them very much.
We decided to skip episode ten, ‘Blink’. I’m aware it’s considered one of the very best of the new Doctor Who series, but both of us find the weeping angels just a bit too disturbing. So we missed it out, and instead saw episode eleven, ‘Utopia’, with the time-travelling, apparently immortal Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) reappearing and flirting with Martha. He adds a bit of extra fun to his episodes, and the dynamics between the three characters are excellent.
What we didn't realise is that episode eleven is in fact the first of a three-parter... but it was late, so we left it another week. Finally we watched episodes twelve and thirteen, where a prediction made by the dying ‘Face of Bo’ is uncovered. I liked the way that there’s what they call a ‘story arc’ moving through all the episodes, so that something mentioned in an earlier one could be revealed much later.
There’s ongoing tension as Martha’s mother reports any phone calls to some officials, convinced the Doctor is dangerous. And there are a lot of scenes involving one or more of Martha’s family, when she and the Doctor are on earth. I had almost forgotten that the new, controlling prime minister is also an old enemy... John Simms is excellent in the role.
Overall we thought this an excellent series. I liked Martha very much as a companion and was a sorry that she only did this one season. There are a few ‘extras’ throughout our DVD set, including some of David Tennant’s video diaries that go behind the scenes in interesting ways. Then there’s a final entire DVD with longer documentary-style extras, covering the background of several of the episodes. For anyone interested in some of the filming and production, these are well worth seeing.
Definitely recommended.
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