Day 825 - The Waters Of Mars

This story is seriously freaky! I mean look at her! I can imagine kids having nightmares over this one!

The Doctor arrives on Mars to have a bit of a look round. I'm not really sure why. He seems surprised when he finds the human colony so presumably he didn't expect to find anyone there so why bother looking! Of all the worlds he can visit, Mars seems a bit barren. Anyway that's besides the point. The Doctor stumbles upon the first human colonists on the red planet.

The Doctor's initial excitement at meeting the colonists soon turns to trepidation as he realises exactly who they are. These people are all destined to die when their base is self destructed by it's commander Adelaide Brook. No one ever knows why she does it and due to it being a fixed moment in time, the Doctor is forbidden to interfere.

Speaking of fixed points in time, I have to say that this is one of the cool things about the new series. I may have spoken about this before but after 825 days I'm bound to repeat myself from time to time. The very first season of Doctor Who, back in the 1960s, seemed pretty adamant that time could not be changed. Later these rules were pretty much forgotten and time could be changed. The new series takes the best of both worlds by stating that many things can be changed as long as certain fixed moments remain untouched. I think this is a pretty cool idea. I like to think (on those cold lonely nights) that time is like a wave on a piece of string where the nodes (is that they're called) remain unmoving whilst the rest of the wave moves up and down. In this case the nodes are the fixed points in time.

The only problem I can see with this story is that one of the basic drives (i.e the Doctor being stuck in a situation where the people around him are going to die and he cannot save them) was an idea that was already played out in The Fires Of Pompeii.

When a water filter malfunctions, one of the base members, Andrew Stone, drinks contaminated water which turns him into one of "the flood", as shown in the picture above. As a monster they are impressive looking and the way they constantly ooze water is creepy and must have been so uncomfortable for the actors involved!

The stand out moments are those scenes shared between the Doctor and Captain Brook. The scene where she questions as to why he is so desperate to leave despite the fact he is clearly not a coward sees the Doctor opening up to her about what is going on. He pretty much tells her that her descendants will take inspiration from her and go on to achieve amazing things. He doesn't directly tell her that she is going to die but when she questions him as to why he is telling her all about her children and grandchildren and he responds that he is telling her "as consolation" then it's made pretty clear that something bad is about to happen that the Doctor cannot prevent.

By the end of the story he is leaving them to their fate but then at the last minute changes his mind and returns to the base to try to save the remaining humans. By this point, Adelaide knows it is their fate to die so activated the self destruct regardless. The Doctor at this point has gone completely mental! He claims that as all the Time Lords are now dead then the laws of time belong to him alone and therefore they are his to control.

By the climax of the episode, the Doctor has become a pretty scary character, declaring that he can now do anything he wants and he is the true "winner" of the Time War. We really start to see what happens to the Doctor is he travels for too long on his own without a companion to stop him going to far. He soon comes to this realisation himself when, in a bid to prevent time from being screwed up, Adelaide takes a gun and shoots herself. The Doctor's despair turns to fear when he slowly turns round to see an Ood watching him from out of the snow. As it was the Ood who initially warned him that "your song must end soon" then he knows what this vision means. The episode ends with the ominous chiming of the cloister bell from within the TARDIS. The tenth Doctor's time is nearly up....

Overall this story is fantastic. I love the idea of the Doctor being faced with a situation that he cannot change, and the monsters are amazing and terrifying.

Days 815 to 824 - The Sarah Jane Adventures (Season Three) - Part One

                             

So it was time to pay another visit to number 13 Bannerman road to see what Sarah Jane has been up to. Strangely there are no mentions of the events of Children Of Earth but I'm guessing none of the children to which this series is aimed would have seen that show anyway and if they had then their parents should be bloody ashamed!

First of all, a quick explanation. This blog entry is being split into two due to the fact that a Doctor Who episode was broadcast during this season so I have to write things in the correct order! I'm a little OCD about such things. Here I will be talking about the first 5 out of the 6 stories of this season with the final story being talked about in a later blog entry.

The first story is pretty dull (what a great start we are having here!) however it does see the return of the rhino-like Judoon and Elisabeth Sladen does some of her best possessed acting since "Eldred must live!" Way back in the 1970s.

The second story sees Rani get all pissed off with the others when she thinks they are ignoring her and don't like her as much as they liked Maria (honestly these teenagers with their hormones and everything!) so she sets off to an abandoned theme park to solve a mystery by herself. This obviously isn't a great idea and it's not long before Sarah Jane and co are having to wade in to save the day. Interestingly the alien looks into Sarah Jane's mind and shows her her past and then her future. This means we get some exciting classic series clips such as her first meeting with the third Doctor and her future adventures with the fourth Doctor. Fortunately we are spared the sight of her falling down that steep slope in The Five Doctors. If that slope had a slightly shallower gradient it would be flat! Anyway...then Sarah Jane sees her future which includes a moment of witnessing the TARDIS materialising in the attic! Exciting! 

This story also sees the return of K9 to the series as he is freed from the black hole he has been trapped in for the last few years. I think the truth is that there were some rights issues about using the character in the series but by season three these had been resolved. I had mixed feelings about K9 returning as I've never really like him all that much. However I think he fits in really well to the Sarah Jane series and some of the spitefull comments between him and Mr Smith (Sarah Janes's alien computer) are hilarious.

The third story of this season is where the true gems are. Sarah Jane meets Peter Doulton and they both fall fast for each other and so it's not long before wedding bells are in the air. Throughout part one of this story it's not the sound of wedding bells we occasionally hear but the sound of a struggling TARDIS trying to materialise. Of course if the Doctor is going to turn up at any moment it would have to be at the moment of "if anybody knows any reason why these two should not be joined together.. " This is another cruel game of the Trickster, one of the best recurring villains of the series.

What makes this story truely heartbreaking is that throughout it we are led to believe that Peter is going to turn out to be the bad guy which couldn't be further from the truth. He genuinely is in love with Sarah Jane and they are a perfect match for each other but Peter is forced to give this all up in order to defeat the Trickster and accept his fate of dying from a fall down the stairs at his home a month or so earlier. I think the idea of the Trickster appearing to people at the moment of their death to offer them a deal and a final chance at life is fantastically creepy. Also I must admit that Peter's final goodbye to Sarah Jane when he refers to her as "Sarah Jane Doulton" had me welling up a little!

Of course I can't pass by this story without talking about the Doctor. Having him appear in the series was incredibly exciting and it really established The Sarah Jane Adventures as part of the same universe. It's great to see him interacting with the kids and Luke, Clyde and Rani even get to have a little peek inside the TARDIS! It's at this point that I had my second moment of tearfulness as Sarah Jane and the Doctor say goodbye to each other. Each of them seems to know that this could be the last time they see each other and the Doctor almost certainly knows that his days as his tenth persona are numbered. As Sarah Jane turns to leave the Doctor says "Don't forget me Sarah Jane", a pretty emotional moment and in many ways refers back to when Sarah Jane left the fourth Doctor way back in the 1970s when she asked the Doctor not to forget her. Sarah Jane's response this time of "no one is ever going to forget you" is one of this amazing comments that could be seen to be about David Tennant himself. He may be leaving the show but he has certainly left his mark. For many people he will be their Doctor forever.

The fourth story is a fairly traditional haunted house story. It's ok but a bit of a come down from the previous story. I really don't have much more to say about this one.

And finally story number five is a bit of an odd one involving the Mona Lisa escaping her painting to run havoc around a London art gallery. This is only the second time I have seen this one and I remember deeply disliking it the first time round but for some reason I thought it was pretty good this time. Suranne Jones plays the Mona Lisa and she's pretty funny in the role. 

So there we have it, the first five stories of the third season. I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to work out which of them was my favourite!

Days 810 to 814 - Torchwood: Children of Earth

"Sometimes the Doctor must look at this planet and turn away in shame"

Well that was five pretty dramatic days and no mistake! This mini series of Torchwood lends itself so well to my challenge as each episode takes place on consecutive days so I really felt the pressure mounting.

I can't go into full details of the plot but the basic idea is that an alien creature makes contact with the governments of the world and holds the entire planet to ransom. They will destroy the Earth unless the human race willingly hands over 10% of its children. Now that's pretty dark stuff! To make it even darker, the children are being used as drugs by the aliens. Kept alive, free of pain but strapped to a machine pumping chemicals into the aliens.

The 456, aliens are known, are fantastically creepy. Speaking only to an ambassador from the UK government, the 456 can be barely distinguished from inside its glass case of smoke which it breathes. 

Really struggling to write up something as I'm worried I'm not going to do this justice. Let's just say this is my favourite series of Torchwood by far and above that it's probably one of my favourite TV events of all time!

Of course I have to mention Peter Capaldi as John Frobisher. A civil servant who is caught up in the events transpiring and made an unwitting middle man by the Prime Minister who does not want any of the responsibility or blame to fall on his shoulders. His performance of a man under intense pressure is superb! In many ways he could be considered to be one of the villains of the series as he sets about trying to destroy Torchwood as he knows Captain Jack has information about the UK's prior dealings with the 456 when they handed over 12 children in the 1960s in exchange for an antivirus that would save millions. However John Frobisher is probably one of the biggest victims of this whole affair. More on this later.

By Day Four, Jack and Ianto finally come face to face with the 456 and, after so recently losing Toshiko and Owen, the Torchwood team is again reduced by one more member as Ianto succumbs to a virus released into the building. Throughout series 2 and the first four days of this series, Jack and Ianto have been growing ever closer. Ianto has come out to his sister (in a pretty funny scene where she try's to wheedle the truth out of him about the good looking guy he has been seen having dinner with) and Ianto has begun to see him and Jack as being in a proper relationship. It's signposted early on that this can't last, simply because Jack lives forever. One day he will see Ianto die and have to move on. Unfortunately this day comes sooner that he anticipated.

There was a pretty loud outcry when Ianto was killed off as he was a popular character but I've never been one to question the writers. If they see that it's his time to go, then so be it. And it gives a pretty big cliffhanger for the final day of the series!

One of the things I love about this story is the morality of it. I love all the scenes where the politicians meet up and debate whether they should allow 10% of the children to be given away in order tosave billions. One guy even try's to sell it as a good thing! He claims that in a world with an ever growing population then maybe they could promote it as beneficial. After deciding they will do it they then need to decide how to pick the 10% which is another interesting question with no one at the table wanting to risk their own children being picked. In the end it is decided that they will be picked from the lowest scoring schools and the children will be taken away under the illusion of being given an immunisation.

I now need to return to Peter Capaldi as I talk about one of the most soul shattering scenes I've ever witnessed on television. Not wanting to make it look like no one in the government has lost out, the Prime Minister orders that Frobisher's children should be amongst those selected. Knowing this, and also knowing there is nothing he can do to stop them, John takes a gun home with him and after pretending that everything is alright calmly follows his wife and two daughters into a bedroom where we hear three swift gun shots, then a pause, then one more. After watching this I literally felt like I'd been punched in the chest. It's just so horrible and his loss is felt so completely!

Overall this was five days of fantastic telly! Now back to Bannerman road to see what Sarah Jane has been up to!

Day 809 - Planet Of The Dead

"He will knock four times..." With these words the tenth Doctor realises his time is nearly up. And mine was nearly up too after a pretty close call!

Usually I watch Doctor Who in the evenings. I know it would make more sense to watch it as soon as possible in the day but it doesn't feel right somehow to watch it in the morning. It's an evening thing! So I sat down to watch this episode about 5pm. 

Meanwhile my mates Tom and Ben were watching rugby in the pub. Watching big sweaty men run around a field getting all muddy and rolling over each other, I don't really see the appeal...although...NO I'm straying from the point!

So Tom was moving down to Newquay the following day (or Day 810 as everyone should know it by!) so I said I couldn't not go out for a final few drinks with him. Hearing that Tom was only going to be out until the rugby finished I decided it was best that I leave the episode halfway through and head to the pub knowing that I would be home by about 7ish at the latest so would have plenty of time to finish watching it. Unfortunately things got slightly out of hand with many more drinks than intended and general enjoyment until before I knew it the episode had completely left my mind!

I think if I hadn't watched any if it before I came out then I would not have let myself forget but the fact that I had watched some of it somehow fooled my brain into prematurely relaxing about the whole thing. As such I have to thank Ben for casually asking me how I was getting on in my challenge and to thank both Tom and Ben for then putting up with the near hysteria that ensued. Fortunately this was only about 9:30pm so I had plenty of time to correct my mistake but what made me feel sick to my stomach was the fact that I COULD forget! After 808 days of constant daily doses of Doctor Who I was still capable of screwing up by simply forgetting. With less than 100 days to go it's pretty terrifying!

So to the episode itself. A 2009 Easter special with the gist of it being that a double decker bus from London finds itself transported across the universe onto a desolate desert planet. Fortunately for the passengers, the Doctor is onboard. Unfortunately for the Doctor, he does not have his TARDIS. Meanwhile a swarm of alien creatures is getting ever closer to the bus, intent on consuming the bus and all inside of it.

First of all I have to say that the site of a double decker bus in the middle of the desert is a beautiful site to behold. It's just so bizarre and in a way makes me think back to the very old days when the site of a normal looking police box in the middle of an alien landscape must have looked equally strange!

The Doctor's main companion for this story is Christina. A jewel thief who pretty much doesn't need to rob for the money but just does it for the thrill. The Doctor kind of approves with this which seems a little odd but considering he stole the TARDIS then I guess he can't judge her that harshly!

UNIT make a another return to the series, this time trying to get the bus back and close the wormhole before the alien creatures can swarm through and destroy the Earth. We also meet the new scientific advisor in the form of Malcolm played by Lee Evans. I've got mixed feelings about this character. Basically he turns the whole role into a joke which I don't like because it takes some of the drama out the situation but at the same time he is bloody funny so overall I approve. I don't think he would make a good returning character but for a one off appearance in a special then he's very good. 

With the bus safely returned to our world the Doctor thinks its time he sets of for new adventures but before he goes he receives an ominous warning from a lady on the bus who has presented psychic tendencies. She tells him that something is returning thorough the dark, he will knock four time and that "your song is ending.." As ominous prophecies go, that's pretty damn ominous. That's like text book ominous!

Day 808 - The Next Doctor

At this point it had been announced that David Tennant would soon be leaving the role of the Doctor so to have the 2008 Christmas special be called "The Next Doctor" is a pretty big tease. In the run up to the episode, David Morrissey (the suspected next Doctor) was having to avoid all sorts of question during interviews in order to not let any spoilers slip out!

I don't think I ever really suspected that David Morrissey would actually be the next Doctor but never the less I thought it was a neat idea of having the Doctor meet what he believes to be a future incarnation of himself. However I think the Doctor suspects pretty much straight away that this man is not him. One of the very first times we see this future Doctor he is brandishing his own version of the sonic screwdriver which is just a plain old screwdriver. Clearly he is not who he claims to be.

The obvious answer would be that he was simply an imposter, impersonating the Doctor but in fact the truth is a little more complicated and whole lot more heart breaking. 

The Cybermen have come to Victorian London. A man called Jackson Lake stumbles upon them and in the struggle they kill his wife and kidnap his son. A Cyberman's info stamp also goes off in Jackson's face and beams all sorts of information about the Doctor straight into his head. Having lost his wife and child his mind breaks and he "becomes" the Doctor. He wants to be someone else because Jackson Lake has lost so much. I think we've all probably felt like that from time to time. His dream is to finally defeat the Cybermen and set sail in his TARDIS (his is a hot air balloon!), and travel through time and space. It is, as the Doctor puts it, "the perfect escape".

When the Doctor explains the truth to Jackson he shows him the info stamp which had given him all the information on the Doctor and what a treat this is for a Doctor Who fan. We see old clips of all the other Doctors!! Watching again this time I did not feel the same kind of excitement as this sort of thing has become more common place in the series now, especially around the 50th anniversary. But the excitement at the time was incredible!

The Cybermen are back for the first time since 2006. They are kidnapping children to help them work their machines to allow a giant Cyber King to emerge from the Thames and trample London. I think the Cybermen can sometimes rival the Master for insane plans. And to be honest I really don't understand why they need the kids as a workforce.

Helping them is a woman called Miss Hartigan. Her motivation for helping them is a little vague but it seems that she sees this as a way of asserting herself over the men who have overpowered her all her life. 

With Jackson's son recovered things and the Cyber King defeated things become a little bit more upbeat. However when Jackson quizzes the Doctor on why he is now travelling with no companion the Doctor explains that the departure of each one of them breaks his heart. It's pretty unusual to hear the Doctor talk about his emotions this way and when he finally admits to it it does take you a bit by surprise and that probably makes it all the more upsetting.

Days 796 to 807 - The Sarah Jane Adventures (Season Two)

Time for another visit to Bannerman road to see what Sarah Jane has been getting up to and it's all change in the first story of this season as Maria heads off to live in America when her Dad gets a new job. Before she goes though she gets one last exciting adventure as she battles a Sontarans who survived from the events of The Sontarans Stratagem and wants to avenge himself on the Earth by making all the satellites crash down on the planet. Nice plan.

The second story see's a new girl move into Maria's old house. It's Rani. Not THE Rani though. Oh the wild fan speculation that occurred when her name was announced. I swear Russel T Davies does this sort of thing on purpose sometimes. It's like how Astrid in Voyage Of a The Damned was an anagram of TARDIS. It meant nothing at all but fans would endlessly debate before the episode was broadcast about how she would turn out to be the TARDIS is a human body. I mean what a ridiculous idea! Anyway I've strayed from the point.

Rani is great and her mum and dad are also strong character. Her dad is the headmaster of the school which gets him more involved with the stories and also, rather unfortunately, becomes an enemy of Clyde.

Bradley Walsh stars in the Rani's debut story as an alien who likes to disguise himself as a clown and kidnap children. Clowns are so bloody freaky and this one is no exception. I'm sure this have kids nightmares for weeks. Not me though, I'm a fully grown man so I'm pleased to say I only wet the bed once after this story and then I got over it.

The third story is a bit of an odd one. I remember liking it the first time I saw it but this time it sort of annoyed me. Russ Abbot stars as an astrologer who has wasted his life conning people out of money. Just as he is about to come clean he is possessed by an ancient force which truly gives him the gift of prophecy. The idea of a poor man who feels like he has wasted his life to suddenly find himself at the centre of something so important is quite touching really. Even if the alien force does want to take over the universe. This story also marked day 800 of my challenge. The last centenary I'll celebrate before the final day in day 900!

In the fourth story of this season we meet Clyde's dad for the first time. And Clyde also meets him for the first time in years after his dad abandoned him as a child. After starting to make up with his dad, Clyde foolishly lets him into Sarah Jane's attic in an attempt to prove to his father that his stories of saving the world from aliens are true. Unfortunately his dad gets his hands on a pendant which allows him to control everyone's actions and he turns into a right arsehole! 

The fifth story continues the tradition of the returning villain of the Trickster. This time he manipulates Sarah Jane by presenting her with the chance of saving her parents lives by opening a time tunnel back to the village where they used to live. By saving them she opens up the world to the Trickster. This story would be pretty good but to be honest it just feels like a rehash of the ninth Doctor story Father's Day where Rose saves his dad from being run over by a car only to release terrible monsters on the world as a result.

The finale see the return of Mrs Wormwood, the leader of the Bane, from the very first Sarah Jane Adventures story. It's great to see her back as she's a fantastic villain and the fact that she essentially created Luke gives some nice conflict between her and Sarah Jane as to who Luke should consider his mother to be. The story itself is a little muddled and not great but the scenes between Mrs Wormwood and Luke are pretty good.

I can't finish this blog entry without talking about the Brigadier. As Sarah Jane needs to break into a UNIT facility she needs to call on her old friend to help her. It was great seeing Nicholas Courtney back in the world of Doctor Who as his character goes all the way back to the era of the second Doctor! It's a real shame that this was the last Doctor Who related thing he did before his death in 2011. A return to the main show was not to be sadly.

Days 794 to 795 - The Stolen Earth / Journey's End

Such highs and such lows to this two part story. It promises so much and then fails to deliver. 

The first episode blows my mind! All three shows of Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures come together with all the characters meeting up, albeit mainly over a different monitors but its still pretty exciting. It seems particularly strange seeing members of Torchwood interacting with the characters of The Sarah Jane Adventures as the tone of each show is so monumentally different.

So the Daleks are back..again. Out of the last four season finales they have been in three of them so I'm getting a little tired of them now. But its not just the Daleks who are back. Davros is too! The creator of the Daleks is back in the series! I was so excited when I found out Davros was to make a return but I'm afraid this leads me to one of my first criticisms. He just feels underused, even his entrance into the story doesn't feel as dramatic as it should have been. Saying that, Julien Bleach gives a fantastic performance as Davros and it would be awesome if the brought him back to the series but gave him a half decent story.

So overall part one is very good but things start to fall apart in part two. The cliffhanger into part two is that the Doctor is regenerating. We had to wait a whole week to find out what was going to happen. Was David Tennant leaving? Well...no at the last minute the Doctor siphons off the regeneration energy into his spare hand that he has had lying around the TARDIS ever since the end of season 3. It felt like a bit of a cheat and things only get worse when halfway through the episode we get a clone Doctor growing from the hand who is part human having absorbed some of Donna's DNA. It just all seems a bit naff and a plot convenience so that by the end of the story the Doctor can bundle Rose off back to the parallel world and leave the clone Doctor with her.

With Donna having a Time Lord mind in her head she can save the day by flipping some buttons and prevent the Daleks from destroying reality itself (yes that was really their crazy plan!) but at a cost as her mind soon starts to burn with the pressure of it all. The only way the Doctor can save her is to remove all memories of him from her mind which is a tragedy! The character of Donna has grown so much since the loud mouth we saw in The Runaway Bride and this is all thanks to her experiences with the Doctor. With this taken from her the Donna that we have come to know is now dead and she is back to the way she was. Only her mother and grandfather will ever know the truth. The memory erasure idea makes me think back to the departure of Jamie and Zoe at the end of the second Doctor's era. The Time Lords also wiped their memories of their adventures with the Doctor but they at least allowed them to remember their first meeting with him. Poor Donna doesn't even get that.

Special mention must be made again to Bernard Cribbins who plays Donna's grandfather, Wilf. I don't know how he does it but when he gets upset then I'm right align with him. As he bids goodbye to the Doctor he knows that the Doctor now has no one and promises him that "when it gets dark and the stars come out, I'll look up, on her behalf. I'll look up at the stars..and think of you" Get's me every time!

Day 793 - Turn Left

I've always loved "what if.." stories and here we have "What if Donna had never met the Doctor?"

Visiting a fortune teller on a far off planet Donna finds herself transported to a parallel world where the simplest of decisions changed the entire world. Donna is in her car having an argument with her mum about which job opportunity she should take. Instead of turning left and going for the interview at H C Clements which would lead to her fateful meeting with the Doctor, she instead turns right and instead applies for her mums chosen role of a PA in a small company.

The fact that Donna was not around during the events of The Runaway Bride meant that the Doctor was killed whilst attempting to defeat the Racnoss. As he is wheeled away on a stretcher, a certain blonde girl comes running up to him. It's Rose Tyler. She has finally made it back to our universe only to find the Doctor has died. Gutted!

We now see how the events of the next couple of years would have played out had the Doctor not been there to rescue us and it's pretty grim. Let's list off a few of the many disasters that befall the planet.

First of all Martha is killed when her hospital is transported to the moon by the Judoon.  Not only that but it turns out Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria also went to investigate the hospital that day and were also killed. There's one spin off gone!

The Torchwood team are all but wiped out when trying to deal with the threat of the Sontarans. Captain Jack is taken hostage by the Sontarans and transported back to their home world.

The south of England is flooded with radiation when a replica spaceship of the Titanic falls on London completely destroying the city. 

Fortunately for Donna she has a guardian angel in the form of Rose who appears to her every now and then and gives her helpful hints in order that she can escape what is happening. It is thanks to a lucky raffle ticket that Donna and her family were enjoying a weekend away when the Titanic fell meaning that they escaped the explosion but were sent off to Leeds to live in a house with many other refugees.

Bernard Cribbins is bloody marvelous in this episode as Donna's uncle Wilf. He forms a strong friendship with an Italian man and his family whom they are forced to share a house with. Later on when the man is taken away to "labour camp" as country gets ever crowded and it's "Britain for the British", Wilf's comment of "labour camps...that's what they called them last time, it's happening again" makes you realise just how dark this episode is getting.

Only Donna can set things right and soon she is willingly handing herself over to UNIT so that things can be set right again. Before Donna is forced to sacrifice herself, Rose gives her two words to pass on to the Doctor....BAD WOLF! It's a warning of the return of a very old enemy.

This episode is awesome. I'm not sure how well it would go down if you hadn't seen all the previous episodes that it eludes to. It might all look a bit crazy! Also there seems to be some inconsistencies that we have to look over such as how come the Daleks didn't take over New York in the 1930s if the Doctor wasn't around. And in Voyage Of The Damned it was stated that the Titanic falling on the Earth would destroy it entirely, not just one city. But that's just nit picking. The thing about being a Doctor Who fan is that after 50 years there are bound to be such inconsistencies. The fun part is trying to. Are them make sense. Well I find it fun ok!!

Day 792 - Midnight

A very unusual and highly suspenseful episode.

It's unusual because by the end of it you are still not quite sure what's gone on. The Doctor meets an alien threat which is completely beyond his understanding and that's pretty terrifying!

The Doctor leaves Donna to relax in a spa whilst he takes a bus across the planet Midnight to visit the diamond waterfalls. The sunlight on Midnight is lethal to humans so the windows of the bus are all covered in order to avoid the deadly radiation. I assume when they get to the waterfalls the covers will be lifted temporarily to give the passangers a view.

Unfortunately the bus breaks down on route and when something starts knocking on the walls from the outside, the outside being completely uninhabitable, then the terror starts to mount. It's not long before this unknown force has penetrated the vehicle and one woman is left possessed but starts to repeat everything that everyone else says. This is a very "wordy" episode and it seems staggering that Lesley Sharp (who plays the possessed lady, Sky I think her name was) remembers all her lines. She pretty much has to learn everyone else's lines too as she is soon speaking at the same time as them!

I love this episode but it's so odd. The paranoia of it all gets to you as the other passengers debate whether they can throw Sky from the vehicle or not.

A superb cast of actors also for this one. Unlike other Doctor Who's where there's running about etc, this is simply a group of people trapped in a room so having great actors really matters. Colin Morgan who would go on to play Merlin stars in this episode as does David Troughton, the son of the second Doctor, Patrick Toiughton. Come to think about it I've only just realised that his series has two children from two Doctors starring in an episode with Peter Davisons daughter starring in an earlier episode. That's quite interesting. Well I think it is anyway.

Days 790 to 791 - Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead

Warning, this blog entry contains spoilers!

Well where do I start with this one! So many fantastic ideas packed into a two part story. I'll try to examine them one at a time.

1) River Song - Here's the debut of a character that would go on to play a very important role in the Doctor's life but this being a Steven Moffat script things can't be as simple as all that. Here we meet River at what will turn out to be the end of her life and this is also the first time the Doctor ever meets her. But it's not the first time that a River has met the Doctor. She has shared many adventures with his future self, adventures that we as viewers are yet to witness. This sets up for a dynamic relationship between the two as she knows information about his future and he is not sure whether he can trust her or not. In fact the Doctor only accepts that he can trust her when she whispers something very personal in his ear. She knows the Doctor's name! And this clearly really freaks him out

A long while ago I read the novel, The Time Travellors Wife, and the relationship between the Doctor and River feels very much like the characters in the novel. A relationship whereby the two lovers keep meeting out of sequence with each other.

I'm guessing that at the point of writing this episode Steven Moffat was aware that he would soon be taking over from Russel T Davies as show runner and that David Tennant was also due to depart. This gave him a great opportunity to lay the seeds and set up his stall for what "his Doctor" was going to be like. As River says "The Doctor is here, he came when I called just like he always does, but not MY Doctor" It gave me chills just to hear her talk about it. It's also cool that some of the things she mentions as having experienced with the Doctor we have now actually seen, such as the crash of the Byzantium in Matt Smith's first season as the Doctor.

2) The Vashta Nerada. Steven Moffat has come up with some awesomely creepy new monsters for the series such as The Silence and The Weeping Angels and the Vasta Nerada are way up there in the creepy stakes also. To describe them is quite difficult except to say they are darkness. Any shadow could actually be one of their swarms, they are piranhas of the air, and to step in one of their shadows means to have the flesh stripped from your body. Never before has the phrase "stay out of the shadows" seemed more ominous. 

The Doctor:- "Almost every species has an irrational fear of the dark, only they're wrong. Because it's not irrational, it's Vashta Nerada!....it's what's in the dark, it's what's always in the dark"

3) Communication devices storing thought patterns. Each member of the archeological team that have come to discover the secrets of the library are wearing a communications device on their neck which shows a strip of green lights. As well as allowing them to communicate it also stores their thought patterns allowing them to send "thought mails". A glitch of this technology is that when a person dies whilst wearing one, their pattern is temporarily stored in the device until it degrades and the green lights flicker into darkness. This has the chilling effect of allowing the dead person a few minutes to communicate with the living. They are confused and don't really understand what has happened to them which makes all the more spooky. When Miss Evangelista is killed it is left to Donna to comfort her in the few moments before her pattern degrades. The Doctor describes her as "a footprint on the beach and the tides coming in". 

4) The other world. Throughout the story we keep leaving the library and see scenes of a little girl at home with her dad. She thinks the library is all in her head and Doctor Moon is there to help her. In fact she is the computer and Doctor Moon is the antivirus device sent to help her in her confusion. She has uploaded all the people from the library and "folded them into her dream" in order to keep the safe from the shadows. When Donna is teleported back to the TARDIS she is also uploaded into the computer and apparently lives a happy life with a husband and two children. Her slow realisation that the world around her is not real and her children are just computer patterns is heart breaking and again show Carherine Tate to be the truest brilliant actress that she is.

I could go on forever about this story, it really is one of the all time greatest!