Pop Vultures

Doctor Who, S04 E05: The Poison Sky

This week on Doctor Who: the Doctor saves the day (again), Donna is noble by name and by nature (again), Martha tries to bid farewell to the Tardis (again) and a tertiary character dies so that others may live (also again). Anna is entertained.

When we last left the Doctor and his chums, evil Mr Potato Heads from Outer Space were taking over the world with deadly gas and creating an evil smirking Martha clone, while Donna and the Doctor were looking on helplessly as Donna’s grandad, Bernard Cribbins, choked to death in a car. The second of this two-parter begins pretty much where we left off, with the Doctor frantically trying to disable the car while Donna gazes in horror at poor old Bernard. I wonder why the hell they don’t try breaking the window. Then - hurrah! - Donna’s mother Sylvia comes along with an axe and does just that. Bernard is free! And none the worse for wear. The Doctor urges him and Sylvia into the house and tells them to seal the doors and windows. Donna’s mum wants her daughter to stay with them, but good old Bernard urges her on to adventure. He rocks.

Back at the base, Evil! Martha, still smirking away, is using her PDA to hack into the UNIT miltary server. Or something. Anyway, realising the Doctor is on his way back, she passes on the message about the Sontarans to Colonel Mace. She’s cunning, but as soon as the Doctor appears on the scene, we realise that he suspects her. He sends Donna off to the supposed safety of the Tardis, but then the poor hypnotised soldiers from the last episode attach teleport devices to the Tardis’s doors and beam it up, Donna and all, to Sontaran HQ. Oops. The UNIT command decide that nuking the Sontarans is the only solution, but the Doctor warns them that nuclear weapons won’t damage the Sontaran fleet. There’s a tense countdown as all the world’s nuclear powers prepare to launch an attack but Evil!Martha is using her superhacker skillz to block the launch so, to the bewilderment of all the military folk, nothing happens. But if the nuclear strike won’t harm them, why don’t the Sontarans want earth to launch the weapons? All will be revealed.

Crazy teen genius Rattigan has said goodbye to his Sontaran chums and headed back to his school. He tells his students/goons about the deal he’s struck with the Sontarans - they’ve given him his own planet, and the students are going to populate it! The students think he’s joking - aliens are attacking the country, people are fleeing cities thanks to the poison gas, and the students just want to get in touch with their families. They’re particularly unimpressed when Rattigan tells a female student that there will be a “breeding programme” in the new world. Yeah, snappy lines like that will help you pull. An increasingly agitated Rattigan produces a gun, but even then the students don’t take him seriously, and just walk out of the room. Rattigan does a little stompy tantrum dance and beams himself up to his Sontaran pals.

The Sontarans are freaking hilarious in this episode, particularly Commander Skorr, who keeps saying things like “ah, this is glorious sport!” in a silly posh voice as he strides around. Rattigan tells him that he’s lost his planet populators, but Skorr laughs at him too and tells him it doesn’t matter, since they were just leading him on - they’re not giving him a planet! They were just using him and his Atmos Technology! Rattigan has another tantrum over the Sontaran’s bad grammar and heads back to earth to have a bit of a cry. The Sontarans mock him and turn off the teleport system so he, or anyone else, can’t come back.

The Doctor communicates with the Sontarans via a video link and sends a special sekrit message to Donna, who’s watching it on the Tardis’s screen. Basically he’s asking her to ring someone, but she doesn’t know who, and as he eventually rings her (on what is presumably a variation on the phone owned by Rose back in the day), this oh-so-clever secret message is a bit useless. Anyway, she rings her grandad, and they have a sweet conversation before the Doctor finally rings her. Oh, and when the Doctor’s video message was coming through, for a second the screen showed a shot of Rose! Curiouser and curiouser.

So yes, the Doctor finally rings Donna himself and asks her to reopen the Sontaran’s teleport link. Even though she knows that it means certain death if she’s found by the Sontarans, she agrees to do it. Donna has shown herself to be very brave throughout this series. It’s pretty impressive. She even disables a Sontaran guard by hitting the unfortunately named probic vent at the back of his head (cue slightly amusing pun-tastic cry of “back of the neck!” from Donna). Meanwhile, the UNIT team have switched to weapons that the Sontarans can’t block, and an epic ground battle ensues. Commander Skorr dies in suitably camp style. The staff all don gas masks, and the Doctor asks Colonel Mace “are you my mummy?” in the manner of the supercreepy gasmasked beings from season 1’s “The Empty Child.” Ha! It turns out that the military are using the government space/airship Valiant (last seen as the evil Master’s lair) to blow away all the gas. Hurrah!

The Doctor discovers Good!Martha and wakes her up, which causes Evil!Martha to collapse. Good!Martha bonds with her evil double, who tells her that the Sontarans aren’t trying to destroy earth, they’re planning to turn it into a ginormous clone pod and that’s what the gas is for. Fortunately, the Doctor has an idea. He’s going to use Rattigan’s atmospheric converter, intended for the planet that never was, and burn away the gas cloud still hovering above earth. His plan works, of course. Huzzah! Still, the Doctor knows that the Sontarans won’t give up. Now that Donna has reopened the teleport links (and been saved by the Doctor just before the Sontarans blasted her away), he can defeat them by stealth. Alas, it means yet more noble self-sacrifice, as he must be ethical and offer the Sontarans a chance to surrender before blowing them up with the atmospheric converter. He bids Donna and Martha farewell and tells Rattigan to “do something clever with your life” before heading back up to what will be, if the Sontarans don’t surrender, certain death for both him and his enemies.

Alas, the Sontarans are so full of battle psychosis that they refuse to surrender and apparently don’t mind dying as long as the Doctor dies too. But just as they’re about to blast him, back on earth Rattigan jumps into the teleporter. When the others ask him what he’s doing, he replies “something clever” and heads up to take the Doctor’s place just in time. Poor crazy Rattigan blows up the Sontarans and himself and saves the day as the bewildered Doctor tumbles back to earth.

Of course, they all get over Rattigan’s death pretty immediately and the Doctor offers Martha another chance to join the Tardis adventure squad. But she says no, annoyingly flashing her engagement ring as proof that her presence is required on earth. Just as they’re all saying goodbye to each other, my husband remarks that he wishes they’d return to the old days when the Doctor had no control over where the Tardis was going, so the companions couldn’t just head back to earth and their families whenever they felt like it; it added an air of tension and danger that’s kind of missing if the companion can bow out at any time. And literally as soon as the words left his mouth, the Tardis started acting up and Martha started demanding to be let out, but the Doctor couldn’t do anything - the Tardis was out of control! Apparently my husband has magical powers and can control Doctor Who plots. Any requests for future developments?

Next week: the Doctor has a daughter. No, really. A daughter.