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.
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