First things first this series had to introduce yet another new assistant given Freema Agyeman's departure, and the chosen character was bringing back Catherine Tate's character from The Runaway Bride Donna Noble.
To begin with there was a Children in Need short called Time Crash where The Doctor met his former self, Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, and there was much happiness and fan boy squeeing. This year's Christmas special was Voyage of The Damned featuring the Doctor and Kylie Minogue on the space Titanic in an adventure that is a strong contender for worst Doctor Who serial of all time. The Doctor then meets up with Donna again in Partners In Crime as they stop some living fat with an evil matron... its as dumb as it sounds. Then its off to ancient Pompeii for The Fires of Pompeii where The Doctor has to cause the eruption of Vesuvius to save the world. Then they go to The Planet of The Ood where they learn of the horrible mistreatment of Ood, from Ood Sigma and set them free from their slavery, defeating the evil Tim McInnerney. Then they are called back to London by Martha in The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky where they stop the Sontarans and The Doctor meets Donna's grandfather Wilf. Then The Doctor, Donna and Martha get taken to a futuristic war and the Doctor has a female clone made from himself in The Doctor's Daughter and it totally sucks. Then much fun is had as The Doctor and Donna help Agatha Christie solve a murder mystery in The Unicorn and The Wasp. Our heroes then travel to the biggest library in the universe in Silence In The Library/Forest of The Dead , where they meet River Song, who knows an alarming amount about The Doctor and stop the deadly Vashta Nerada, shadow monsters, and River gives her life to save the day so that The Doctor will live to take her on all her adventures in the future. Then we have a Donna-lite episode called Midnight where The Doctor and a group of people are trapped on a bus with a woman possessed by an unknown creature in a really tense and emotional episode. Then we have a Doctor-lite episode in Turn Left where we see what would happen if Donna had never met The Doctor and there is an entire alternate universe created around this, its good, except Rose comes back to help her and to set up a lame cliff hanger by having Donna tell The Doctor bad wolf in a reference back to series 1. The finale two parter is The Stolen Earth/Journey's End where The Daleks, led by their creator, Davros steal the Earth and put it in The Medusa Cascade as part of a series of stolen planets used to make a bomb to destroy reality. The Doctor is nearly killed, pouring his regeneration energy into his hand that was cut off in The Christmas Invasion and then when Donna touches it there is a biological meta crisis and a second half human Doctor is born. teamed up with Martha, Mickey, Sarah-Jane, Captain Jack, Rose and Rose's mum, Sarah Jane's son and the surviving members of Torchwood three (long story) The Doctor, Donna and the DoctorDonna defeat the Daleks and return the Earth to its rightful place, they then return Rose and Jackie to the parallel Earth with the DoctorDonna, safe in the knowledge she can never return and is stuck with a lover who is half made of Catherine Tate... Sadly Donna's collision with the Doctor's D.N.A. means she has to have her memories of him erased, and can never remember the Doctor or she'll die.
Once more David Tennant gamely trudges through the mess of Davies' era Who, and manages to bring some good emotional moments to the forefront of the show. Also his meeting Peter Davison in Time Crash though not technically part of the series is terrific.
Catherine Tate really surprised me by giving an actually terrific performance as Donna, she was funny, clever, had an attitude and never once fancied The Doctor. Its just a shame that considering they spent many times saying how she was the most important person in the Universe she spends 3 episodes in a row sharing with Martha, then two with River Song where her actions contribute nothing, then Midnight where she basically isn't in it, then Turn Left where Davies clearly thought Rose was more important and then the finale sharing with so many people she barely gets to do anything. An actual interesting companion and she got shabby treatment in favour of less interesting ones.
Julian Blech as Davros deserves a mention as he was downright terrifying and brought a lot of energy to the role.
My favourite adventure this series was Midnight and much as it feels weird to pick a Davies episode as my favourite, I can overlook my bias when the episode is this good. But did he really have to make Leslie Sharp's character another Lesbian? (More on Davies PC agenda to come)
My least favourite is without a doubt Voyage of The Damned for just all around awfulness. I really hate that one. But I also want to mention that the finale two parter is pretty dreadful too, with fa too many companions stuck in just because Davies was going to be leaving soon and wanted to shove them in and a plot that breaks the first rule of science fiction by not making any kind of scientific sense. If you put the Earth in another place in space without a sun we'd all die from cold, and if the Earth were to vanish the moon wouldn't stay where it was it would hurtle off into space and if the TARDIS translates all languages why did the Doctor have to speak Judoon? And for the same reason why did Martha have to speak German? And why were the Daleks speaking German? That makes no sense.
.png)
In short, a rare shining light in the Davies era, but still annoying in plenty of places.
No comments:
Post a Comment