Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter Two- War of the Sontarans

 “Repair must not be undertaken by idiots!"

Once again, for the second week in succession, I must admit this episode is pretty good. Chibnall's scripts have a certain lack of wit and polish, but he's getting better. And, much as I'm not sure how the general family viewing public will be reacting to this complex, universe-spanning, timey-wimey plot, I'm quite enjoying it.

The main season plot chugs on underneath as our three mysterious baddies from the dawn of time- Azure, Swarm, and the bizarrely named Passenger- attack a planet called Time, which isn't supposed to exist, where mysterious priests called Mouri keep Time itself under control as, apparently, when Time is uncontrolled it is "evil". All this is brand new mythology, unknown either to us or, interestingly, the Doctor. It'll be interesting to see where Chibbers is going with this. So far it seems to be about providing a Perils of Pauline-style cliffhanger for Yaz and Vinder, now integrated into the gag, just to give us a cliffhanger, but the concepts are cool.

Meanwhile, the Sontarans have exploied the Flux to invade Earth and, in a nice touch, are basing their claim on Linx's exploits all that time ago- and they seem to have time technology far more extensive than that of The Time Warrior, invading Earth at all points in its past in a plan which is rathere confusing to think about. But the extended sequence of the Doctor and Mary Seacole in the Crimean War is rather fun as an A plot for the episode, and I must confess that history being changed so that the British, French and Ottomans are fighting the Sontarans, not the Russians, is pretty damn cool. And I like the portrayal of the Sontarans- comedic, yes, as they have been since RTD brought them back, but also brutal.

As is the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker proves to still be on fire here: she's awesome.So, too, is the character of Dan, merrily slaughtering hordes of Sontarans with a wok given to him by his mum in Sontaran-occupied Liverpool, as you do, in scenes which reminded me a bit of Independence Day.

There's also that sceptical bloke ffom 1820 wandering around in the temple on the planet Time, and so many cool concepts and set pieces not least of which is a Sontaran on a horse. I must admit, I'm rather enjoying this.

Doctor Who: Last Christmas

"So that's 22 million children per hour. That's impossible! So, obviously, I've got a second sled?"

Could this be the best Christmas episode ever? It really could be, although I'm glad that an episode questioning the existence of Father Christmas happens before my daughter is born. We combine the real strengths of Moffat's storytelling- an imaginatively conceptual monster that revolves around our perception of it and intricate plotting- with real heart, wit and fun. Naysayers beware: this blog post will consist of 100% gushing.

I love the whole concept of dreams within dreams, and the dream crabs themselves, which look like face huggers from Alien (as we're told, by Michael Troughton's Albert!) and always attack you when you think about them (that is sooo Moffat), anaesthetising you with nice dreams as they melt your face off. Lovely.

Oh, and Santa is in it. With all the best lines. Nick Frost is perfect casting, and all the scenes with Santa and the elves are hilarious, leavening what could otherwise be the grimness of the base under siege format.

The plot is a marvel to behold and, wonderfully, any conceivable plot hole can be justified that the whole thing (including the very end of Death in Heaven) is a dream except the last few minutes. It's not a dream without dramatic consequences, though; the Doctor and Clara finally admit that they lied to each other and parted for absolutely no good reason. Oh, and we seem to get to know Shona suspiciously well for a one off character. Could we be seeing her again?

(Shona, incidentally, gets the best metatextual moment of the episode as she wakes up in her drab flat; her Christmas to-do list includes three DVDs- Alien, The Thing from Another World and Miracle on 34th Street- which are the clear influences for the episode. Nicely done.)

Obviously, Clara dreams about Danny (will he stay dead?) in a lovely character scene in which Danny, wonderfully, insists that he didn't die saving the world; he died saving Clara. The rest of us were just along for the ride. And Moffat cruelly wrong-foots is at the end, showing the Doctor returning to an elderly Clara (nice age make-up for once), having squandered the chance forever to travel with her again. But this is all a dream; the Doctor and Clara get a second chance, and we end with them travelling together again.

A really nice touch here, incidentally, is the fact that the Doctor can't tell the difference between old and new Clara. Another nice touch is the description we get of the Memory Crabs: "We're getting hacked. The visual input from your optic nerve is being streamed to their brains". I have to marvel at how Moffat, as he did in The Bells of St John, describes an alien threat perfectly in terms of very contemporary technology. The only death (Albert) is shown figuratively by having him pulled into a screen, some excellent nightmare logic. And the Doctor has a line in the sand: "Santa Claus does not do the scientific explanation."

Best Christmas episode ever!!!

Doctor Who: Deep Breath

"I'm not your boyfriend."

Damn you, Moffat. My lovely wife may be pregnant, and somewhat prone to blubbing, but that bit where Matt Smith's Doctor told Clara over the phone that his new self would need looking after made her cry!!!

This is the best regeneration story I've properly seen thus far (although seeing The Power of the Daleks with actual footage would be nice, hint hint, Mr Morris and Auntie Beeb). The Moff is, as usual, both very clever and very meta in having the script address head on all of the audience's concerns and questions about the new Doctor (Peter Capaldi is the Doctor, superb and very Tom thus far) and the show's future. 

Clara's resistance to this older, non-heartthrob Time Lord echoes that of countless fangirls, one of whom I happen to be married to, but Gem, at least, has been won over. It takes time for Clara to be won over too, but this is both realistic and allows her to voice the fears of a portion of the audience, and moreover the clash between her and Vastra over her denial that the Doctor has changed is a real dramatic highlight.

Capaldi is instantly the Doctor, as expected, but the real delight is Clara who, for the first time, is being given actual character traits and a chance for Jenna Coleman to show what a bloody good actress she is when given the material. It's also notable that, given the new friction between the Doctor and Clara, the two leads have real chemistry, more so than there ever was between Coleman and Matt Smith. A lot if this has to do with Clara suddenly being an actual character with a personality, and not just the walking arc plot MacGuffin that was the impossible girl. She's as much of a revelation here as Capaldi.

The plot, while slightly rehashed from Full Circle, is nicely unfurled, with the surprise baddies ("rubbish robots from the dawn of time") being those clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace way back in season twenty-eight. There are some nice moments as the Doctor and Clara investigate,notably as Clara shows what a tough but she is when being interrogated but most shockingly when the Doctor seems to abandon her, a trick which works in a regeneration story as in no other.

There are other little things to love here aside from the plot and characterisation: the little jokes about the Doctor's accent; the hint that the face he now has (that of a Roman whom he met in Pompeii!) is a clue he set for himself(!)( Strax's many splendidly quotable lines, and the slightly kinky nature of Vastra and Jenny's relationship. Oh, and there's that mysterious lady at the end, who apparently both arranged the Doctor and Clara's rendezvous at the restaurant and performed a similar feat in The Bells of Saint John. We will see her again, I'm sure; season big bad, perhaps?

This is an assured and confident beginning (love the new TARDIS interior and new steampunk title sequence!), with a first class script, an exciting new Doctor and a wonderfully nuanced Doctor/companion relationship. Doctor Who is on a real high right now.

Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor

"Why are you naked?"

"Because I'm going to church!"

Yes, I know. I'm very, very late. But I spent Christmas away in an ITV household and only saw The Time of the Doctor late at night and on iPlayer, and when we finally got home after the New Year we discovered that Youview hasn't recorded it. Grr. We're switching to Sky.

But now I've finally seen it again, thanks to Netflix, and been able to take notes so I can blog it at long last, and there is soooooo much to talk about, old news or no. I'm aware that there is a very vocal group of online Moffat-haters, but I'm not one if them, I'm afraid. There will be gushing. If you don't want to read a gloriously positive meditation on the perfect conclusion to the Matt Smith era, look away now.

One thing I've often wondered about Steven Moffat, what with his near-Douglas Adams approach to deadlines, is to what extent his intricate plot lines are charted in advance and to what extent they're made on the hoof (an equally valid approach). Personally, I suspect the answer lies at neither extreme, but it matters not: however he's done it, the Moff has triumphantly tied up all the ongoing plot lines of his era so far as far as I can determine. So let's get all the arc stuff out of the way first so we can move on to talk about the episode, shall we?

The cracks in Amy's wall? The Time Lords trying to get through to our reality via the original crack, so to speak, at Trenzalore. The question that must never be asked, "Doctor who?" Required by the Time Lords so they can come through. Who is behind those religious, military types who have been a theme of the Matt Smith era? The Papal Mainframe, headed by the Doctor's friend and fellow exchanger of flirts, Tasha Yem (whose name reminds me of Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

There's more. The Time Lords cannot come through, whether they're nice now or not: their reputation precedes them, and a new Time War would erupt. Tasha Yem's lot go through an "unscheduled faith change" (delightful dig at religious hierarchies there!) to ensure that Trenzalore is protected, the question is never asked and that "silence will fall": the Silence, it transpires, are actually goodies, and we see them fighting alongside the Doctor.

There's even more. The Doctor is, in fact, on his thirteenth incarnation ("Are we forgetting Captain Grumpy?"): this is it, although we should perhaps not think too much about what looked like an aborted regeneration in The Impossible Astronaut. The Kovarian chapter broke away from the Papal Mainframe to blow up the TARDIS and send River to kill the Doctor ("Totally married her!"). And I do believe that's all the loose ends.

Anyway... we all love Handles, who is cool, cute and useful to the plot, but he is also a useful metaphor for that old Christopher Bidmead theme of entropy, essentially that things fall apart, and as with Logopolis this functions nicely as a metaphor for the Doctor's regeneration. But- and this is important- the fact that everything is going to fall apart and degenerate until the eventual heat death of the universe ("Can't get the parts") is no reason to despair. The Doctor knows that the siege of Christmas will eventually break through and destroy everything, but that's not the point; generations of people will live and love laugh there in the meantime, and these people matter. They matter so much that the Doctor, with his notorious wanderlust, is content to spend his last few centuries of life staying in the one place, defending the citizens of Christmas for as long as he can. This kind of cheerful defiance of entropy is the most Doctor Who thing ever.

The funny scenes of Christmas dinner with Clara's family are important, as they anchor these weighty themes to everyday reality. There's a definite parallel, in the Doctor sending Clara home to protect her, in what he did to Rise in The Parting of the Ways. We remember this as another regeneration story, so the stakes are raised. Still, it says a lot about Clara that she is a lot more resourceful and clever in getting back than Rose was.

Christmas is under attack, so we get nice set pieces with Daleks, Sontarans, cool wooden Cybermen and Weeping Angels, although the latter are a little under-utilised. There's a scene which nicely exploits the fact that Matt Smith has a shaven head during filming. There is the delightful concept of a town where lying isn't possible. But better than any if this is seeing the Doctor embedding himself into a real community, slowly growing old (this is an acting your de force from Matt Smith), yet holding out against all comers... except old age. By the end of the episode he's at least 1,400, and dying. The clock is striking twelve.

But there's Clara, as ever, to save him, in this case by having a chat to the Time Lords on the other side of the crack. Yes, entropy, everything dies, blah blah blah, but why not kick the can down the road for a bit more and give the Doctor a brand new regeneration cycle? We may all be doomed in the end, but the Doctor will now live to save a load more people along the way.

The regeneration itself has its cake and eats it in being both enormous (the explosion) and low key (Clara and the Doctor in the TARDIS). The short cameo from Karen Gillan, "the first face this face saw", is far more effective than Tennant's over-indulgent "reward" in The End of Time. And the underplayed regeneration is brilliant; it would have been so easy, as with last time, to be self-indulgent. Instead we have an exciting and unknown future lying ahead.

Doctor Who: The Name of the Doctor

“No way my wife is buried out here…”

“Your what?!”.

Nearly twenty-four hours on, and I’m still fangasming. I loved it, obviously, but don’t expect any serious critical engagement with this episode, or indeed reviewing, in this “review”. Instead, I shall flail about like a flaily thing and, uhm, squee incessantly.

At last we know the solution to the Clara conundrum, and it’s a neatly elegant one. She is indeed just an ordinary person, if a little more magnificent than usual, and it’s only when she sacrifices herself, and shards of her persona are scattered throughout space and time that she becomes extraordinary. The other Claras are the soufflés; the original Clara is the recipe. It is at the same time so gloriously complicated and so elegantly simple. And this is what leads to the cliff hanger, as the Doctor heads into his own timeline to save her.

We see River again, or rather a backup of her from after her death in The Silence in the Library two-parter. She is therefore at the latest part in her life, if you can call it that, than we have ever seen her. She has what seems to be her final goodbye to the Doctor and they share a passionate kiss such as has never quite seen before in Doctor Who. Intriguingly, we discover towards the end that River is solid and seems to have a physical existence. This added mystery implies we will be seeing her again. Spoilers, sweetie!

Vastra, Jenny and Strax are brilliantly used, as always. They are the glue that holds the story together. The concept of a séance across time is inspired, and also rather convenient, as this is the means by which Moffat assembles his cast of the Doctor’s friends, and thus allows the plot to happen. We get a touching glimpse into the kinky but loving relationship between Vastra and Jenny. Vastra is distraught when Jenny “dies”, and her comments to Strax are revealing: he remarks that the heart is a simple thing and she replies, simply “I have not found it so”.

Strax, of course, is at his comical best, but in this case this serves as a contrast with his radically different behaviour after the Great Intelligence has begun to erase the Doctor’s time stream, becoming hostile and humorous. And, yes, this is my cue to flail about wildly at all the old clips, old Doctors and such forth.

The continuity porn begins immediately, and has me jumping up and down like a kangaroo on a trampoline on speed, as we see the Doctor and Susan nicking the TARDIS all those years ago! At last, we have it confirmed that Susan was with him at the time and, oddly, he’s wearing the same Edwardian clothes that we see him wearing in An Unearthly Child, un-Gallifreyan though they are. Loads more clips follow, in which all the Doctors appear in varying levels of detail, including an interesting one in which footage of Patrick Troughton from The Five Doctors is inserted in to footage of modern California. Many of the clips look a little odd, as the picture quality does not match modern HD, but it is awesome to see them.

Almost as fangasmy is the fact that we finally get to see Trenzalore and the Doctor’s tomb. We do not, after all, hear the Doctor’s name spoken, but it is both the key to the Great Intelligence’s scheme and important to the final scene, of which more shortly. I expected to see the Silence in this episode, but they are, it is perhaps implied, the good guys in that they only intend to prevent the Doctor being erased from history and the great suffering that would cause. Instead, we get another great Moffat villain in the Whisper Men, who remind me of the Gentlemen from the Buffy episode Hush.

But the thing we’re all really hyper about, twenty-four hours later, is John Hurt’s previously unknown Doctor. Who is he, and why is he so beyond the pale to his subsequent incarnations? We face the challenging task of waiting a whole six months to find out. See you on the twenty-third of November. Excited much?!

Doctor Who: The Snowmen

“I said I’d feed you. I didn’t say who to…”

Gosh, there’s so much to talk about, isn’t there? 2010 aside, Christmas episodes are usually fluffy, light, and aimed at a larger and more drunk audience than usual. There’s an element of that, mind, but there’s also lots of other cool stuff that we’re obviously going to talk about. So I’ll just quickly get the actual “review” part of the review over with so we can do that.

This is a fun, exciting and magical piece of family Christmas entertainment, with a mix of scares (the Snowmen, with their sharp, pointy teeth- bloody scary), wonderment (the TARDIS is on top of a cloud, reached via an invisible staircase: the Doctor gets more and more like a good wizard all the time), good villains (Richard E. Grant and the voice of Ian McKellen) and laughs (Strax: Moffat is his usual comedy genius self and Dan Starkey is a bloody good comic actor). It’s exceedingly good. There. Let’s move on to the geeky stuff, shall we?

There’s a shiny new theme tune, which seems ok so far: I need time to get used to it and make a proper judgement. There are new and brilliant opening titles,which look to be 3-D ready and, in a nicely retro touch, feature a glimpse of Matt Smith’s face. Best of all is the retooled TARDIS interior, which kicks arse.

The Doctor is far from over losing Amy, moping in Victorian England ostentatiously refusing to do Doctorish things while his supporting cast Madame Vastra, Jenny, and their rather funny Sontaran butler Strax keep him company. According to Vastra he “prefers isolation to the possibility of pain’s return”, and is doing sod all. Of course, all this leaves a suspiciously large gap for a massive retcon; I won’t be surprised if Moffat later reveals that the Doctor has been up to something important in the London of 1892.

Moffat, being the co-creator of Sherlock, gives us a bit of metatextual fun, establishing that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character in the Doctor Who continuity, probably based by Conan Doyle on the exploits of Madame Vastra and her lady wife. This also functions as a nice little shorthand as to what sort of adventures they’re getting up to while the Doctor, apparently, isn’t having any.

But let’s get to the point: Jenna-Louise Coleman making her debut (again) as Clara, as a dress rehearsal until she presumably debuts for good at the start of the next series. I like her. She’s ingenious, resourceful and, as my girlfriend remarked, similar to Alice off of Alice in Wonderland in the way she just accepts all these wonders and investigates them. I still reckon there’s a germ of truth in the charge that Moffat tends to write his women in a certain way, with River Song being as good a template as any, but much of that is down to the demands of the genre: the female lead in an adventure series is bound to possess certain traits.

Clara / Oswin so beguiles the Doctor that he invites her to travel with him after a ridiculously short period of time, until Moffat goes and does his misdirection thing and (eventually) kills her. Again. But by now the Doctor has realised: she’s the same person, twice. What is going on? He needs to “find” her, and seems possessed with a rejuvenated urge to adventure.

Some last uber-geeky things: The baddie is the Great Intelligence, making this a prequel to TheAbominable Snowmen, which aired back in 1967. The 1967 London Underground map rather tends to indicate that The Web of Fear was set in this year, which buggers up UNIT dating delightfully. And the origin story for the Great Intelligence here rules out the Lovecraftian theories as promoted in the Virgin novels back in the ‘90s.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

Part One

“But I’m an old hand at hypnotism.”

On the day that Muammar Gaddafi has been killed, I watch the last ever episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures following the untimely death of Elizabeth Sladen who dies earlier this year, and the concept seems to be clearly inspired by Steve Jobs, who also died recently.

So, Steve Jobs is introducing the iPad… er, Joseph Serf is introducing the completely dissimilar Serfboard. Incidentally, the Serfboard is firmly established to be rubbish. Could this be Gareth Roberts making comments on the iPad, perchance…?

It’s wonderful that Elisabeth Sladen gets to shine so much in her last story; her journalistic activities are such fun here, and I loved the fact she’s been hypnotised so many times it no longer works! Her little digs about “Serf” being a hologram are fantastic, and Harrison’s obvious annoyance makes it so much more fun.

The big character theme here is, of course, that Luke’s coming home at the end of term, and he has a new sister. This is an obvious theme for the target audience: the disruptions of a new sibling, especially an adopted one, and the realisation that one is slowly leaving home. It’s a very poignant moment when Luke finds out that his old room is now Sky’s.

There’s an interesting moment between Rani and Clyde, too. It’s clear they haven’t been together for a while, and Ellie is mentioned. There are hints at a recent frostiness: “Just like the old days- you and me, having a laugh.” I expect this was supposed to have been developed during the two intervening stories which will never now be made, but the series hangs together surprisingly well as a whole with just the first two stories and this finale.

It’s such a great kids’ show concept that “Serf” should be controlled by a load of cowled cyclopean little cute aliens pulling levers! Just as with the last season of Doctor Who, I’m reminded of the Numbskulls from The Beezer.

Part Two

“It’s bobbins!”

It’s a fantastic cliffhanger- the aliens are actually nice, and tell Luke and Sky to run. The idea behind this is very dark for a kids show, though: the Skullions crash-landed in Central Asia, and Harrison bought them on the slave market. It’s human trafficking, more or less. Just as with last episode, real world issues are at the forefront. And just as with the last story, a lovely blow is stuck against our tabloid culture: a Romanian immigrant, no less, and a cleaner too, is not only portrayed as heroic but is rewarded at the end with a cool job at UNIT.

Less heavy is the idea that Harrison plans to use alien tech to sell a load of useless crap via hypnosis- a dig at advertising, perchance? Good old BBC!

The whole gang gets cool stuff to do. Rani and Clyde, posing as a married couple(!) bond as they gatecrash the press conference, while Luke and Sky have to pull the levers. The bits with cute aliens getting tortured are nasty, but there’s a lot of fun, bonkers stuff here. And Harrison certainly gets the ending he deserves.

There’s an interesting bit at the end, where Rani and Clyde get very couply and start talking about a “family thing”- ooh! Was there a bit more to this scene, or a “to be continued”…?

The final montage is wonderful, and best of all is the final caption: “And the story goes on… forever.”

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky

The Sontaran Stratagem



“Is that what you did to her? Turned her into a soldier?”

I like the pre-credit sequence a lot; there’s something brilliant, effective and very very zeitgeisty about the concept of killer satnav. Almost an updated version of the chair and the doll from Terror of the Autons, in fact. And it’s nice, if a little Sarah Jane Adventures-y, to have a young genius as villain; Doctor Who has another trope to add to its collection.

Oh, and we get a proper UNIT story, in spite of odd glimpses for the first time since Battlefield. And Martha’s back. Yay! Except that the context of both Martha and UNIT has changed. This is handled brilliantly. I love the initial meeting between her and Donna, nicely subverting both our and the Doctor’s expectation of School Reunion-style fireworks. Martha’s doing very well (“She’s engaged, you prawn!”), but clearly still damaged by her experiences. But UNIT is not what it used to be (“back in the ‘70s. Or was it the ‘80s? But it was all a lot more homespun back then”). In Fragments it was seen to be doing reprehensible things, and it’s good that this is acknowledged in the Doctor’s frosty attitude to Colonel Mace, and his initial semi-doubts about Martha. But it’s also good that the Doctor and Martha later resolve this with their little chat; just as the Doctor tries to make people better, Martha means to do this with UNIT. This works, more or less, allowing the character to keep her integrity.

Notwithstanding UNIT’s moral dodginess, though, I don’t like the implication here that the Doctor has some kind of moral objection to guns and blowing things up per se. He doesn’t. At all. Oh, he may think they cramp his style a bit, granted, but he had no qualms about using guns when necessary in Day of the Daleks or Frontier in Space for example.

Incidentally, on the theme of (yawn) UNIT dating, the Doctor’s dialogue rather tends to support my view that all UNIT stories exist in some sort of shifting time zone of quantum uncertainty. Or something. And it’s good to hear greyhounds talking to traps again.

Oh, and it’s great to see the Sontarans again, of course. Christopher Ryan is fab, as is the design, although I could do without all the “Sontar-HA!” stuff. I imagine this means we’ve been well and truly told that Sontar is the name of their planet then. It’s a particularly nice touch that they’re actually jealous that they weren’t allowed in the Time War.

Their re-introduction is well done and integrated well into the also impressive plot; the necessary exposition about the probic vent is done as a cool little action scene with a tennis racket, making the Doctor look rather cool. And once again, I notice, he presses the big red button. Plus we get a bit of body horror with the proto-Martha clone. Impressive stuff from Helen Raynor. Oh, and we also get more nostalgia as one of the soldiers shot by Staal cries “My legs! I can’t feel my legs” just as Ian did in The Daleks. Please tell me I’m not the only person who noticed that. Because it would be rather tragic if I were.

This being contemporary Earth, we also get some good stuff for Donna, as Martha urges her to not repeat her own mistakes in not telling her family where she was. But as before she’s only able to connect with Wilf and is unable to tell Sylvia. There’s something genuinely troubling in this mother / daughter relationship, and the subtle way this is handled is quite impressive; it’s clear that there are character arc things going on here. Of course, the Doctor’s abortive farewell speech to Donna, and her reaction (“Dumbo!”) is the best thing in Doctor Who ever. It’s official; from now on I not only like Donna. I bloody love her.




The Poison Sky



“Good work. For a female.”

Things are bad, so it’s out with the news reports. This time it’s Kirsty Wark who joins Trinity Wells in a nice little bit of exposition telling us what peril we’re all in. This is pretty much an all-action episode, and doesn’t have anything like the depth of the first part, although there are some nice bits. I like Donna’s understated reaction to being given a TARDIS key. Again, though, we’re reminded that RTD is starting to mine the same ground. It’s not a problem at this point, but it has the potential to become one eventually. Again we’re reminded that his song should probably end soon.

Luke, the Tobias Vaughn of this story, gets some nice moments in this episode which gives his character arc a pleasing trajectory. First there’s his speech to the students (“I’ve designed a mating programme! I’ve planned the whole thing!”) which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t go down well. Then there’s his shocked realisation that Staal was planning on betraying him all along; as Donna would say, well duuuh! And then, of course, there’s his final sacrifice.

We also get a big and rather impressive gun battle, in which Skorr has a wonderfully Sontaran reaction to being killed. No less impressively, we get a reference to “Sir Alastair”. Yay! UNIT are redeemed a little from last episode; Mace’s weapons are effective, plus we get to see Valiant again, which is cool. They and the Doctor are not quite reconciled (and shouldn’t be, considering what they did to Tosh, and no doubt others), but it’s also acknowledged, rightly I think, that the Doctor has also been guilty of rudeness and tactlessness. Still, I loved the “Are you my mummy?” I like a bit of metatextual fun, even when it’s totally gratuitous, like this.

The Doctor’s willingness to sacrifice his own life because he has to offer the Sontarans a chance he knows they’ll never take- this Doctor’s guiding ethical principle, it seems, the flip side of “No second chances”, is wonderful. And so’s the aftermath, as Martha takes his arm and Donna slaps him. But soon they’re off again, this time with an unwilling passenger.


Well, that was the epitome of what we used to call trad Who, albeit with some good character work, mostly in the first part. A good 3/5.