One Sentence Review

A much better special than the first with the only significant disappointment being we probably wont get a special with the “Dark Doctor”

Episode Recap

The Doctor arrives on Mars and spots a human base. He is quickly arrested when he is spotted by a guard robot called “Gadget”. He is then taken inside the base and interrogated by the bases commander Adelaide Brooke who thinks he is an agent for an independent group. The Doctor then learns he is on Bowie Base 1 in 2059, and remembers information about it which includes everyone dying in 2059. He then remembers the base blowing up, he then starts to worry when he learns the date is November 21^st 2059 the date of the destruction of the base and gets ready to go as he says its one of the rare times he cant do anything.

In the Biodome of the base of the crew members Andy gets infected by something after eating a carrot he just washed. Before the Doctor leaves the base tries to contact the Biodome but hear a growling in response and cant see the interior on cameras. Adelaide then stops the Doctor from leaving and force him to accompany them to the Biodome.

Before they get to the Biodome, they find another crew member Maggie unconscious in the service tunnel. Maggie is then put into isolation in sickbay. As they approach the Biodome, Adelaide is informed that the sound matched the voice print of Andy. In sickbay Maggie wakes up and seems to be okay, while Tarak manages to find Andy who is dripping with water and face is covered in fissures. In sickbay Maggie undergoes a transformation into the same form and states an interest in the Earth.

In the Biodome, Adelaide and the Doctor find Tarak being attacked by Andy, and after he lets Tarak go he turns into the same type of creature as Andy and Maggie. The Doctor and Adelaide manage to escape the Biodome and seal Tarak and Andy inside. Adelaide then orders all water supplies cut off and The Doctor again insists on leaving. Before he can leave though Tarak and Andy manage to escape from the Dome and Adelaide and The Doctor can only escape by The Doctor modifying “Gadget” so it can go fast until they reach the main base which should be safe for the time being.

Given the situation Adelaide decides to order an evacuation of the base. The Doctor then points out that Maggie took time to change so they could already be infected. The Doctor and Adelaide then go to inspect the ice-field to see if they can work out when the “infection” began. A little later when everyone leaves the medical dome, Maggie decides to escape.

At the ice-field The Doctor explains why he thinks he cant help as he thinks that the events on Bowie Base 1 are a fixed moment in time and will lead to humanities exploration of space. Adelaide then discovers that the infection is limited to the Biodome and everyone else can leave. The Doctor is then told to leave but before he can, “the flood” start to “attack the roof of the base”. The Doctor then starts to leave. As the Doctor gets into the airlock Adelaide traps him in there and asks him what really happened. He then tells her that she destroys the base and no one ever knows why and that he cant help no matter how much he wants to.

As the Doctor walks away he hears the disaster and deaths of the crew on an open radio channel and it cumulates with the destruction of the escape shuttle which blows him down. Before he gets to the Tardis he makes a decision regarding him being the last of the Timelords and so he is in charge of the laws of time and heads back.

Despite this he finds that he cant do anything to defeat “the flood”, he then uses Gadget to get to the Tardis as Adelaide activates the self destruct with a 100 second countdown. The Doctor then manipulates the Tardis controls using Gadget so it materialises around the survivors just before the base is destroyed.

The shocked survivors including Adelaide then find themselves on Earth outside Adelaide’s house on the same day. While Mia and Yurie run off, Adelaide is not pleased with the Doctor given what he told her about her importance and his abuse of power. The Doctor is unsympathetic to her and has a Dark tone to his conversation calling himself “The Timelord Victorious” and claims there is nothing he cant do.

As the Doctor turns to go and Adelaide enters her house we hear a gunshot from behind Adelaide’s door as she had committed suicide. The Doctor then recalls the changed details of the events on Bowie Base 1, and realises he had gone too far, he then see’s an Ood in front of him and asks it if this is the time of his death to which he gets no response as it disappears. The Doctor enters the Tardis says No and launches it on another journey.

Thoughts and Analysis

After Planet of the Dead I went into this special not really expecting much, but thankfully ended up thinking that this was a really enjoyable episode whose main problem was that this really should have been the first special with the ending changed so that the Doctor did not realise the implications of what he had done.

This is also one of those rare episodes of a show where you recognise their are plot holes or more accurately absurdities but don’t actually care as it is all tied together in such a way that it is highly enjoyable to watch.

Now the main plot hole has to do with the main enemy who I assume is called “the flood” and much like their namesake from the Halo games seem to have a hive mind type existence and infect and take over host bodies. The main problem is that they seem to be able to create infinite amount of water out of thin air. Now while air does contain a certain level of water within it, and it could possibly be feasible to create small amounts from the gases in the atmosphere, the sheer volume of water “flood infected” could create was absurd.

The second problem was the infection of Maggie, now this was apparently a deliberate “sleeper infection” but if so it acted in an idiotic way since it did not really do much aside from alert people there was a problem and it could hide. Maggie had to get from the Biodome to the tunnel so why put her unconscious which would make them take her to the medical dome, when if it did nothing and kept her conscious it could get into a far more vital area.

Adelaide’s actions towards the Doctor where also strange since if you suspect he could be involved with a problem you should lock him up and not leave him loose. Her attitude towards being saved was also weird as just a little earlier she was adamant she would survive yet after the Doctor saved her she insists she has to die to preserve the time-line which she wouldn’t know about if he hadn’t told her.

Given the Doctor has the means to travel through Space and calls himself a Timelord, why not instead ask him to drop her off somewhere else in time, perhaps after her Granddaughter has completed her important flight. Or for that matter why didn’t the Doctor do that, as the important thing was surely that she was believed dead not her death in of itself.

That being said the story was strong enough that I didn’t care about the plotholes. What I did care about was that the Doctors “walk on the darkside” lasted for about 2 minutes before he realised he had gone too far. This to me was a big disappointment as it would have been “nice” to see the heroic Doctor unintentionally doing great harm before he realises the depths to which he has sunk. Let’s be honest here though if it wasn’t for his arrogance at the end of the episode he actually would have just been doing his normal thing.

This makes the first special even more painful in hindsight as if this had been the first special with it ending on the Doctor’s gloating then, we could have had a proper exploration of the Doctors Darkside which fans of classic Who will remember has previously been seen as the Valeyard in Trial of a Timelord, an incarnation of the Doctor occurring between his twelth and thirteenth regeneration. Having the Doctor go dark and then repent of his actions so quickly was a major let down.

As for the next special from the Trailer it is clear we have the return of the Master with John Simm still in the role. This makes me wonder how he will reappear and if the master who died at the end of Last of the TimeLords was actually a “human-master” regeneration similar to the “human-Doctor” in Journey’s End. There is also the reappearance of Donna and Wilf so who knows whats going on there.

All in all though, a highly enjoyable episode of Doctor Who, just a shame about Planet of the Dead and the ending.

Episode Rating

8/10