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!