Day 756 - Utopia

So this is where things get a little confusing. I'm now very near the end of the third season of the new version of the show and this episode also carries on directly from the last episode of the the first season of Torchwood, with Jack hearing the materialisation of the TARDIS. Strangely in Torchwood it appeared that the TARDIS was materialising inside the hub itself when in actual fact it's just outside but I can look past such things.

So the Doctor has landed the TARDIS in Cardiff in order to soak up energy from the rift running through the city. As the Doctor spots Jack sprinting towards the TARDIS he tries to make a quick dematerialisation but not before Jack manages to grab hold of the door and ends up riding the TARDIS through the vortex! The TARDIS doesn't take too kindly to this and also due to Jack's freaky immortality the ship travels all the way to the end of the universe to try to shake him off.

The Doctor, Martha and Jack discover a small group of survivors on the planet they land on, all of which are waiting for the completion of a giant rocket which they believe will take them to Utopia, a place where they can survive the end of the universe itself. In charge of getting the rocket up and running is Professor Yana, played by Derek Jacobi! 

Now if you've got a great actor like Derek Jacobi in an episode then why limit him to just one character! Martha discovers that the kindly professor is actually a Time Lord who is hiding as a human using a similar fob watch the Doctor used in Human Nature. Instead of being thrilled the Doctor seems terrified at the prospect that another one of his own people survived the Time War and it becomes clear that this is because he suspects which one it is..the Master!

The scenes where Yana is beginning to realise there is something hidden inside him are some of the most exciting and thrilling scenes in any Doctor Who ever! When I first watched this I had no idea that the Master was returning and therefore this was just about the most exciting thing that could ever happen to me. Yes it's sad but undeniably true. We even hear a sound clips of the previous Masters! I mean come on! That is pant wettingly exciting!

Derek Jacobi is superb obviously. As soon as the watch is opened and he turns to face the camera there is no doubt in your mind that you are now looking at a completely different man. How the hell does he do that? It's all in the eyes somehow. Which is rather appropriate for the hypnotic Master.

Unfortunately Derek Jacobi's turn as the Master is even briefer than his turn as the Master in Scream Of The Shalka as he is soon shot by his assistant shortly before stumbling inside the TARDIS and locking the Doctor out. For the first time we see the Master regenerate and he turns into John Simm!

Harold Saxon aka the Master has officially arrived in the new series! Woohoo!

Day 755 - Blink

" The Lonely Assassins, that's what they used to be called. No one quite knows where they came from, but they're as old as the Universe, or very nearly. And they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defence system ever evolved. They are Quantum Locked. They don't exist when they are being observed. The moment they are seen by any other living creature they freeze into rock. No choice, it's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing, they literally turn into stone. And you can't kill a stone. Of course, a stone can't kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. Then, oh yes, it can."

Steven Moffat creates a terrifying new monster for the new generation of Doctor Who fans, the weeping angels!

This story is pretty much perfect. It's an episode I would happily show to someone who had never seen Doctor Who before as an example of how awesome the show can be. Each season tends to have an episode which does dot feature to much of the Doctor in order that the filming schedules can be completed and in some ways you would think that this would be a detriment to the show but on the contrary it allows them to come up with great ideas like this one.

The hero of the story is a young woman called Sally Sparrow who finds herself getting involved with the sinister weeping angels. These statues cannot move whilst they are being observed but as soon as you look away or blink then they'll get you! The way they kill their victims is also an interesting thing. They send you back in time and effectively let you live to death. This is what has happened to the Doctor and Martha and now they are cut off from the TARDIS and need Sally's help to prevent the angels getting their hands on it.

Some of the writing is just beautiful. After meeting a young police office called Billy, the very next time Sally sees him is as a dying old man in a hospital after the angels have zapped him back in time. He has a message for Sally from the Doctor but has been told that the only time he will see her again is the day he dies. Sally says she will stay with him to which he replies "Thank you Sally Sparrow, I have until the rain stops". Simple and beautiful.

Days 753 to 754 - Human Nature / Family Of Blood

Now we're back into some great Doctor Who with this two part story which sees the Doctor transforming himself into a human in order to hide from a race of aliens known as The Family who wish to consume the last remaining Time Lord which will then allow them to live forever.

Therefore for most of this story we do not see the Doctor at all but his human counterpart, John Smith who is working as a teacher in a boarding school in the year 1913. He has no memories of his previous life and it's left to Martha to look after him. Martha is working as a maid at the school and is the only one who knows that they are in hiding. After 3 months, if the family do not find the Doctor then they will die so all Martha has to do is wait and then when the 3 months is up she can open the fob watch where the Doctor's consciousness is stored and he will return to normal. Sounds simple enough.

Unfortunately it's not long before John Smith is falling in love with the nurse at the school and this is where things get complicated. First of all Martha is pretty pissed off that the Doctor has fallen in love with a human and it's not her. Secondly it makes restoring the back to normal and therefore effectively killing John Smith all the more heartbreaking.

These are the kind of episodes I love. Science fiction gives us a chance to explore the every day human emotions but applied to far out ideas. Here we have an ordinary man, John Smith. He has dreams of being an adventurer called the Doctor but has no idea that these dreams are in fact true. When faced with the prospect that his whole life has been a lie he completely breaks down as I imagine we all would. As Joan begins to suspect the truth about her new love we get some fantastic scenes where she subtly tries to quiz him about his childhood and starts to realise that the facts spouting out of his mouth sound simply like entires in an encyclopedia. 

In one tear wrenching scene as John Smith realises he must sacrifice himself in order to save the world, he and Joan hold hands over the fob watch and see what their entire future together could have been, with their marriage and subsequent children. As Joan puts it "The Time Lord has such adventures. But he could never have a life like that"

With the Doctor back, he quite insensitively asks Joan to join him on his travels. She's tells him she can't as the man she knew is dead and the Doctor merely looks like him. He continues to try to persuade her until he gets the coldest response ever of "Tell me one thing, if the Doctor had never come here. If he'd never chosen this place..on a whim, would anyone here have died?"

For the most part the people who meet the Doctor seem to get something positive out of it, for example a completely differbt outlook to life. With regards to Joan, she sees the Doctor as the man who killed her future husband. Not a pleasent man at all!

Day 752 - 42

What a confusing title for a blog entry that is! Yes this episode is called "42" which is play on the popular tv series 24. Just as 24 is set in real time, this episode too is set in real time (sort of) with the action taking place over the 42 minute length of the episode.

The basic plot is that Martha and the Doctor find themselves trapped in a spaceship which is 42 minutes away from plummeting into a sun. It sounds like a really exciting idea for a story but I've always found this episode to be the weakest one of this series and as such it took a lot of effort to watch.

There are some "sun creatures" who possess a couple of the crew members who then go round lazering people to death with heat rays from their eyes. It's all a bit "meh". They become a little more interesting when one of them possesses the Doctor leading to a horrible scene where Martha has to try to freeze the creature out of him by forcing him into a cryogenic chamber.

Martha and one of the crew members attempt to get through a series of locked doors which can only be opened by answering some pub quiz style questions.. for some reason. Luckily the Doctor has just updated Martha's phone allowing her to call her mum to get some of the answers. She doesn't tell her mum she is actually on a spaceship in the future which I guess is understandable. However this is where there is a least some intrigue in the plot as at the end of the episode we see a sinister woman recording the phone conversations. Martha's mum has been persuaded to work for the mysterious Harold Saxon.

Apart from that bit of excitement, this one was all a bit dull really. The last couple of days have been really tough for some reason and my motivation to watch an episode each day has been waning. But I must not give up now!

Day 751 - The Lazarus Experiment

Having written for the series a couple of times already, this time Mark Gatiss is actually starring in an episode of Doctor Who. I've always though Gatiss was an awesome actor. He is blessed with one of those voices that I could listen to for hours. It's also cool as he is a life long fan of the show so is clearly loving his appearance in the series.

He plays Professor Lazarus, the creator of a machine that can rejuvenate old people back into being young again. Unfortunately after exposing himself to the first test run of the machine, he slowly begins to turn into a monster who then goes round killing the people who have come to see his miraculous project in action. I took some delight in the death of one woman, which makes me sound awful, but she was a right stuck up bitch. The Doctor bursts into the room, warning everyone to get out as they are all in terrible danger, to which this woman replies that the only danger is that someone will choke on a olive...she just really annoyed me so I'm glad she got it!

What turns what good be a typical monster run around story into a great story is slowly finding out the background of Lazarus. As a child he was forced to hide in fear in a nearby Church during the blitz, sure that he was going to die. Since that day he has done everything he can to hold back death. 

He shares some great scenes with the Doctor where they discuss life and how living a very long life isn't always a good thing as you have to see loved ones pass away whilst you continue to live.

It's in this story that Martha finally gets to become a full time companion too. At first the Doctor wants to drop her off home after meeting his promise of giving her a short trip in the TARDIS. By the end of the story he knows they have grown to close and admits to the inevitable conclusion that she is his new companion. I think at first he didn't want to call her that as it would seem to soon after Rose and almost like he was cheating on her but by this point he realises she is going to be around for the foreseeable future.

We also get to meet Martha's (rather annoying) family again and her mother takes an instant dislike to the Doctor who she doesn't trust one bit. It's not helped by the fact that the mysterious Mr Saxon is sending her messages warning that the Doctor is dangerous. Just who is Mr Saxon??

Days 749 to 750 - Daleks In Manhatten / Evolution Of The Daleks

Spiderman is in this one! Well he's not Spiderman but Andrew Garfield who plays Spiderman in the most recent movies has a part in this episode. That's quite exciting. The casting of this show has come a long way since Ken Dodd!

It was in the last episode that the Doctor finally revealed the truth to Martha about how he was the last of his kind after a huge war with a race called the Daleks. It's pretty handy that he told her this as the very next story features the return of the Cult of Skaro from the last series!

Escaping the last story through the use of an emegency temporal shift they have found themselves in 1930s New York where they are hiding out under the newly constructed Empire State Building. The building has been designed to their specifications in order that the gamma strike which is soon to hit the Earth can be captured and used in "The Final Experiment"

The Final Experiment is the Cult's last ditch attempt at the survival of the Dalek race. They are the final four Daleks in existence and yet humans are the great survivors who go on and on. Therefore their plan is to combine their DNA with that of humans and turn themselves in to Dalek/Human hybrids. As one Dalek brillantly puts it, "A life outside the shell, the children of Skaro must walk again."

Daleks have been in the show for a very long time, almost from the very beginning, and therefore I welcome any story which allows them to develop or at least give them something different to do. Seeing the Doctor chatting to a humanoid Dalek, one is beginning to show real emotion and compassion, is fantastic.

Some other aspects of the story work less well. For example, the scene where the Daleks explain their plan to the captured humans that they soon plan to convert. The Doctor is "hiding" in the background but he's still clearly visible to all the Daleks! How can not a single one of them notice that their greatest enemy just happens to be in the room with them!

By the end of the story only one Dalek remains alive. In all the universe, just one. Unfortunatley he escapes using another emergency temporal shift but the Doctor knows that he has not seen the last of this lone Dalek.

750 days done, with only another 150 to go! The end will be here before I know it...and then what the hell will I do??

Day 748 - Gridlock

The Doctor continues on his rebound from Rose by taking Martha back to New Earth, a planet to which he took Rose in the previous series.

This time we see more of the slums of the city and it's walled off motorway. A motorway with the worst traffic jam ever! Some people have been on the road for years! And the scary thing is they just accept this, they don't see it as strange and it's not until the Doctor starts making them question what is going on that start to realise that things are terribly wrong. 

As part of this story there are a number of hymns sung by the drivers whilst trapped on the motorway and I believe this episode was even nominated for a religious award due to this. But it seems to me that whoever nominated this episode has kind of missed the point of it. If anything this episode is an attack on religion. The drivers are blindly accepting things on faith alone and when the Doctor demands that they face the truth, such as when he asks if they have ever seen a police vehicle, they turn hostile at him questioning their beliefs.

Of course every Doctor Who story has to have a monster of some kind and even more exciting is that the monsters in this episode are returning creatures to the show. Of all the great creations of the past to return their is certainly a few that I was clamouring for at this point but this one took me completely by surprise! Macra! The giant crabs from the second Doctor story The Macra Terror. The story that actually no longer exists! Well it's safe to say I did not see that one coming!

The Macra aren't the only face from the past that the Doctor meets however as it is time for The Face Of Boe to make his third and final appearance in the series and more importantly reveal his greatest secret. Just before he dies he tells the Doctor "You are not alone". Therefore there must be at least one more Time Lord out there...and I think I know which one!