In the Library with the Screwdriver

Doctor Who – Forest of the Dead

[WATCH OUT FOR THE SPOILERS]

 Part two of this story saw the Doctor and his companions escape the inescapable by blasting a hole through the shelves. Somewhat cheating, I felt, but I’ll let it pass as the rest of the episode was still so good.

While the Doctor, River and the remainder of the team were dashing about in the library trying to avoid the Vashta Nerada, we found out what was happening to Donna. She was living a different life, one where she didn’t know the Doctor and was doing ‘normal’ things like getting married and having children. Was she really dead and this was some kind of afterlife? Or was it a virtual reality? She started to spot strange things, like in dreams where one scene jumps to another. This was highlighted to her by Miss Evangelista, but even when she was aware that it wasn’t real, she couldn’t do anything about it.

 The Doctor was eventually told by Lux that CAL was the computer with a little girl wired in to it, that looked after the library (Doctor Moon was to look after her). All the people who had tried to teleport at once to escape the Vashta Nerada had overloaded the system and had been ’saved’ onto the computer and were all living in the virtual world with the little girl and Doctor Moon. The Doctor figured out a way to save them, but it would mean sacrificing his own life. River stopped him and sacrificed herself instead.

We still didn’t find out who River Song was, although she knew the Doctor’s name and whispered it to him to prove she was someone he could trust. As the Doctor pointed out, he never tells anyone his name, apart from under one circumstance. What that circumstance was we weren’t told. But the Doctor worked out that by giving her his sonic screwdriver he managed to save her, so downloaded her into the library computer so she could ‘live’.

The one problem I had with the episode was how the Doctor overcame the Vashta Nerada. They had been this terrorising force over two episodes when suddenly the doctor confronted them and told them to check the books for who he was. They did and suddenly became fearful of him, so allowed 24 hours for everyone to be evacuated from the library before they reclaimed it. Now the Doctor has been held as someone of power who is to be feared in the past (Fenric, Morgaine), but why didn’t he confront the Vashta Nerada sooner? Very frustrating.

Fear of the Dark

Doctor Who – Silence in the Library

[SPOILER ALERT - NO, MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. Watch out for those spoilers ...]

I was looking forward to this two parter, simply because Steven Moffatwas writing it. He has written some of my favourite New Series Who and always gives something dark, scary and clever with a peppering of great comedy. Silence in the Library didn’t disappoint.

The Doctor and Donna arrive in the biggest library in the universe, only to find it deserted. But they are not alone. There are over a million million lifeforms there, and a little girl who isn’t really there at all. And the shadows are closing in …

Soon they’re joined by a team of archaeologists who’ve come to find out about the library, headed by the enigmatic River Song. We don’t know who she is, but she knows the Doctor and has a book about him, which she says contains ’spoilers’ (there was also a reference to spoilers at the beginning when the Doctor was talking to Donna about turning to the last pages of a book to find out what happens before reading it) – a great comment on the spoiler obsessed fan community?

But there’s something in the shadows. It’s called Vashta Narada and you can’t see it (apart from the dust in sunbeams) but it strips flesh from bone. And it’s there in the library, bringing the darkness and shadows in.

The Doctor teleports Donna back to the safety of the Tardis, only she never makes it, and as he leads the team through the library, pursued by the now dead Proper Dave he finds out by finding her face on a Node (the library’s information points which have ‘real’ faces). So it looks like Donna’s dead and Proper Dave is closing in. The the lights start to go out at the other end of the corridor. The best cliffhanger ever.

Who knows what’s going to happen next week?? How will they escape? And who is the mysterious little girl? And who is River Song and how does she know the Doctor? It’s good, proper Doctor Who when there’s so many questions to be resolved next time.

I must just make mention of the announcement last weekthe Steven Moffat is to be the new man in charge of Doctor Who for the 2010 series. I actually heard that he’d been appointed before I heard that Russell T Davies was leaving, so I was very happy and excited by the news until I got to the bit where Davies was going. It’s sad as he’s done so much great stuff for the series. But the show couldn’t be in better hands. Moffat has given us a whole spectrum of fantastic Who elements in the stories he’s written; scary gas-mask monsters, statues that move when you don’t watch them, romance and heartbreak for the Doctor, and the most wonderful comedy, nostalgia and old series tribute in last year’s Children in Need special Time Crash. Things are going to be great.

A Murder is Announced

Doctor Who – The Unicorn and the Wasp

[SPOILER WARNINGS]

I loved this episode, so much so that it has quickly become one of my favourite New Series stories. The Doctor and Donna travel back in time to 1926 and meet Agatha Christie, bestselling author and ‘Queen of Crime’, who just happens to be my favourite author. So a fusion of my favourite television programme with my favourite author – what could go wrong.

Well, potentially lots of things. I have to say I wasn’t looking forward to this episode and I was concerned that a Doctor Who whodunnit wouldn’t work, and that the characterisation of Christie wouldn’t do her justice. But, fortunately I was wrong on both counts and Fenella Woolgar played Christie in a very sensitive way. Obviously the fantasy elements of a Science Fiction programme allowed the world created to not be exactly as a 1926 English party would have been. There were no alien creatures in the world of Agatha Christie, no giant wasps and certainly no one surviving cyanide poisoning.

My one gripe with the story concerned the ‘explaination’ of Christie’s disappearance. This was one of my concerns, but I think the altering of the facts (she disappeared from her own home, in December, Silent Pools isn’t a pretty lake and she had been staying at the Harrogate Hydro since the day after her disappearance) made it clearly an ‘alternative’ disappearance which took place in the Doctor Who universe.

Who’s the Daddy?

Doctor Who – The Doctor’s Daughter

[SPOILER WARNING]

A great little episode, although it did feel like there was too much going on for just a single episode story. The pace was good throughout the whole episode, but it just felt like there could have been more exploration of the characters and situation than the single episode allowed.

The Doctor has a daughter – shock, horror! (Well, no. We’ve always known he had a granddaughter… ) But this daughter was created by a cloning process from a tissue sample that was forcibly taken from the Doctor. The episode saw the Doctor trying to stop the war, while his daughter Jenny tried to understand how there was more to life than fighting. Donna was very good at reconciling the two, and showing that they were more alike than either of them wanted to see.

I loved the idea of the war having only taken place over seven days, but had been fought for ’several generations’ due to the daily creation of humans and Hath to fight. The Hath did seem a little pointless though, mainly due to the fact that they couldn’t speak clearly and we had to rely on Martha’s interpretation of what they were saying. (who in their right mind creates a race of fish/human hybrids and forces them to breath through gills??!)

And I wonder if it’s the last we’ve seen of Jenny … ?

The Air That I Breath

Doctor Who – The Poison Sky

[SPOILER WARNING]

The second part of the two parter definitely lived up to my expectations. There were some great plot twists, like the ‘evil’ Martha clone actually preventing UNIT from causing a nuclear war. Wilf was saved from the fume-filled car by Donna’s mum smashing the window – an idea so obvious I can’t believe no one else thought of it!

There were some lovely moments with the Doctor putting all his faith in Donna alone on the Sontaran ship. And Rattigan came good in the end, and used his genius to save the world rather than destroy it. There were also some great mentions of previous Doctor Who stuff – the Doctor spoke about the Brigadier (a classic series reference. It would be good to see the character again though) and when they all put on gasmasks in the fumes he asked “are you my mummy” (from The Empty Child). There was also the reappearance of the Valiant, the UNIT ship seen at the end of the last series.

The graphics were amazing, as always, but I must just mention the scenes where all the fumes were being burnt out of the earth’s atmosphere. That was truly amazing to watch and so brilliantly realised.

And then there was another, very brief, shot of Rose …

 

Sat-Nav

Doctor Who – The Sontaran Stratagem

[SPOILER WARNING AS USUAL]

The Sontarans are back – not that you could have guessed (the episode title did kind of give that one away). But so is Martha Jones, and UNIT too! A whole heap of old things in a brand new episode.

The Doctor has been called back to Earth by Martha, who’s now working for UNIT. They’re investigating Atmos, a system which removes all CO2 emisions from car exhausts, and comes with a handy free sat-nav (Although I’ll never trust my sat-nav again after this). It’s been masterminded by a child genius, Rattigan, who turns out to be working for the Sontarans.

As well as the child genius, there were some other good sci-fi staples in there – cloning, mind control, and the evil double of Martha. I think there’s some good stuff to come in part two next week. And there was a great cliffhanger – Bernard Cribbins trapped in a car choking on fumes. Will he escape, and will the Doctor save the world?

There was also some fun stuff. I did enjoy the Doctor’s comments on having worked for UNIT “sometime during the 1970s, or was it the 1980s?”. I love how no one’s ever quite worked out that story dating mystery. And Donna being ‘Supertemp’ and checking the company files while everyone else is busy looking for aliens under the bed.

No mention of the bees this week. Maybe they’re not signficant? Or maybe they are …

I’d like to teach the world to sing

Doctor Who – Planet of the Ood

[SPOILER WARNING]

The return of the Ood, last seen in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit (why do two parters have to have seperate titles??) was something that I was a bit puzzled by. They hadn’t been that striking the first time, and they certainly weren’t a malevolent force in the same was as some other recurring monsters. But The Doctor takes Donna to her first alien planet – the Oodsphere, from where all Ood are sold across the empire.

It’s Donna who points out to the Doctor that the Ood aren’t merely servants, but are slaves and are treated inhumanely by their masters. The Doctor admits he hadn’t really paid that much attention to them before, and it’s Donna who questions them about their desire for freedom, showing again her sympathy for others and her humanity. It’s a characteristic which really seems to be developing over the episodes and making her very likeable.

But the Ood distribution have a problem in the form of ‘red eye’ and everyone wants to know why. The Doctor goes off to find out about unprocessed Ood and helps Donna to hear the song of captivity which he says he always hears. But it takes an infiltration from the ‘Friends of the Ood’ to find helps them find out why “the circle must be broken”

It turned out in the end the real big bad wasn’t the Ood after all, but Halpern (wonderfully played by Tim McIinnery), who was trying desperately to hold on to his family’s trade in Ood and the control over them. He got his comeuppance in the end – he was turned into an Ood in probably the most gruesome scene of the entire revived series.

A special mention must be made for composer Murray Gold. His incidental music is always good, but this week’s was especially so as it was so intrinsic to the plot. The song of the captive Ood was so beautifully sad and captured that essence of plaintive song that a race enslaved for over two hundred years would be singing. It wasn’t only Donna who was moved to tears by it. Then he strikes again with a wonderfully uplifting song when the Ood are free which celebrates their emancipation.

And finally, a puzzle – why is Donna so obsessed with the bees disappearing? Obviously it’s something that should concern us all, but she does keep mentioning it. (also mentioned in Partners in Crime) Or is this this year’s Bad Wolf??

Volcano Day

Doctor Who – The Fires of Pompeii

[USUAL SPOILER WARNING]

The Doctor takes Donna supposedly to Ancient Rome, only it turns out they’ve landed in Pompeii instead (usual lack of control over the Tardis there?). It’s the day before the Vesuvius is due to erupt and Donna wants to warn everyone, but no one understands. There’s an alien threat trying to alter history by stopping the eruption and controlling the visions of the soothsayers.

I’m warming to the character of Donna with each story so far. She really seemed to have hear heart in the right place when she realised that she and the Doctor could potentially save all the people from dying in Pompeii. She also really showed the Doctor what it is to be human when faced with possibilities like that; he seemed all distant and Time Lordy, going on about fixed points in history. In the end, the only way to save the world was to kill all the people in the town.

I really loved the humour and in-jokes that appeared in the episode – the additions of Caecilius, Metella and Quintus from the Cambridge Latin Course I did at school (and according to Doctor Who Confidential, so did Russell T Davies and Phil Collinson)! Interestingly, for the books, they were based on real people who lived in Pompeii and I appreciated that Donna persuaded the Doctor to save them. And then there were the Asterix (whom I also love) type gags of TX Maxximus and having all the Pompeiians thinking the Doctor and Donna were Celtic (or was it that they were speaking Welsh?) when they spoke Latin.

And the “I’m Spartacus” “Me too” line made me laugh too.

A trip through time and space

I’m struggling to get my Who fix, as the Doctor Who Forum is broken at the moment!

But I thought I’d share a video with you which one of my lovely KInDA friends posted earlier today.

It’s amazing to see how things have changed since the days of Delia Derbyshire …

Together again

Doctor Who – Partners in Crime

[USUAL SPOILER ALERT]

The new series kicked off with a lighthearted and fun story, which I really enjoyed. I was a little bit concerned that it wouldn’t be so good with the return of Donna Noble, a character I hadn’t really liked during her appearance in the Christmas special, The Runaway Bride. But she seems to have changed, for the better and although still mouthy and slightly annoying could prove to be a good foil for the Doctor.

The story concerned Donna finding the Doctor by looking for trouble and them both stumbling across the very strange new fat busting drug called Adipose. This turned out to be a strange seeding and birthing scheme for the Adipose aliens. The little baby Adipose were formed from the fat of the human hosts, which sounds very yukky, but they were quite cute.

I loved the CGI on the Adipose themselves (The Mill doing fantastic work, as always). And there were some nice little touches, such as the one that was skipping along as they all waddled down the street, the one sliding down the bonnet of the taxi and the squshing noise as the taxi stopped and seemed to run over a few!

And I must mention the return of the great Bernard Cribbins (voice of The Wombles, storyteller and, of course, from the second JackanoryDoctor Who film), who appeared in Voyage of the Damned at Christmas. It turns out his character is Donna’s grandfather, so I’m hoping that he’ll turn up again in the series sometime soon.