Pop Vultures

Doctor Who, S04 E06:The Doctor’s Daughter

This week: The Doctor has a daughter. A perky, somersaulting daughter. Anna is slightly underwhelmed.

When we last left the Doctor and Co, the Tardis was hurtling out of control. It finally comes to a stop and our three heroes stumble out into a damp tunnel to find themselves confronted by Chris from Skins and some other gun-totin’ teens. They sieze the Doctor and force his hand into a weird tubey thing which takes a tissue sample, causing the Doctor to roar in pain. It quickly becomes clear that they do this to extract the Doctor’s DNA and, through some unconvincing sciencey business involving a pod, create a fully formed adult human soldier, whose soldier skillz have apparently been downloaded straight to the brain, Cylon-style. By the way, why don’t the teen soldiers take samples from Martha or Donna? Anyway, a perky blonde girl in army fatigues emerges from the pod. “Hello, dad!” she says perkily. Yikes. By the way, as you may know, this sassy, perky young lady is Georgia Moffett, the real-life daughter of Peter Davison, who played the Doctor back in the early ’80s and so will always have a special place in my 30-something heart, and Sandra Dickinson, aka Trillian from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She’s sci-fi royalty!

The Doctor is reluctant to acknowledge his offspring and Donna is encouraging him to embrace fatherhood (the nameless daughter is casually named Jenny - regeneration, geddit?) when some strange fish-faced beings turn up and battle commences between them and the Skins-led soldiers. Martha is captured by the fishie folk and carried away. A grenade is thrown, the tunnel caves in - but Martha’s on the other side, and she’s going to stay there for almost all of the episode. I really like Martha and was thrilled to see her back, but I wish she’d been allowed to share more screen time with the Doctor. Not only have they been apart for nearly all of the episodes since her return, but even when they were in the same place they were never alone together. It reduces the potential emotional impact of this reunion. Anyway, the Doctor wants to try to rescue her but Chris insists that he and Donna come with the teen rebels. They arrive in what looks like a theatre-turned-army base, where they’re met by the soldiers’ gruff older General, Cobb. Cobb tells the newcomers that for generations there has been a war between the humans and the fish-people, the Hath. They all arrived on this planet, Messaline, together, but soon fell out when each side claimed command, and have been warring ever since. Both sides want to find something called The Source, rumoured to be the breath of the planet’s creator god, which will allow them to gain supremacy. All the Doctor’s exchanges with Cobb can be summed up thusly:

The Doctor: I am a pacifist! I was in a war and it was horrible!
Cobb: You were in a war? So you were a soldier!
The Doctor: Guns are bad, mmmmmkay?

Repeat. I share the Doctor’s views, but this exchange gets a bit dull after a while. Anyway, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver (yawn) to reveal secret rooms in the general’s map of the planet’s tunnels but gets locked up by the General for his trouble. Donna is locked up too, as is Jenny, purely for being the daughter of a pacifist. Seems like General Cobb is a eugenicist as well as a war monger.

Meanwhile, one the other side of the tunnel, the kindly Martha fixes the dislocated shoulder of the Hath who captured her. This seems to win over all of Hath-kind, and they turn out to be quite friendly. Martha can somehow understand their strange gurglings and joins them when they examine a map similar to that of the humans. When the Doctor reveals the hidden tunnels, Martha and the Hath (that’s not a bad band name) can see them too. The Hath prepare to investigate but Martha wants to take a short cut and cut across the planet’s surface. She persuades her new Hath chum to join her, but they discover that the journey is more gruelling that Martha suspected. Martha tumbles into some…quicksand? I dunno, anyway, she starts sinking and Freema Agyeman does a good job of conveying Martha’s sheer terror. The Hath tries to save her and succeeds, but ends up getting sucked in instead. Martha wails in anguish. Freema Agyeman is very good at on-screen crying. She manages to get away and stumbles towards a tower-like structure.

Donna discovers that Jenny, like the Doctor, has two hearts, but despite this evidence that he now isn’t the last Time Person after all, the Doctor still won’t acknowledge his fatherly status. He later tells Donna that he was a father before (and a grandfather, in the earlier series) but his progeny died and he can’t open himself up to the pain loving a child can cause. Jenny uses her feminine wiles (ie she snogs Chris from Skins through the bars of their cell) to free herself, the Doctor and Donna. They set off in pursuit of the Source, but the teen soldiers soon realise that they’ve gone and head after them. Donna announces that she too will use her womanly wiles to distract another guard but the Doctor dissuades her, because only 20-year-old blondes are allowed to be sexy, apparently. Anyway, as they head through the corridors (cheap set alert!) towards the Source, Jenny and the Doctor bond a bit. By the time she’s shown she can resist her fightin’ conditioning by using non-violent means to stop their pursuers, he’s asking her to join them on the Tardis. I like Donna’s description of life with the Doctor: “”He saves planets, rescues civilisations, defeats terrible creatures…and runs a lot. Seriously, there’s an outrageous amount of running involved!” Jenny also shows her mad gymnastic skillz by somersaulting through a web of lasers. The Doctor and Donna are impressed. I am slightly bored by her blonde perkiness. Donna notices that there are numbered plates throughout the tunnels.

Martha manages to stagger to the tower and meets the Doctor, Donna and Jenny, and after the standard hug-filled reunion Donna realises that the numbered plates are dates, marking the completion of each section of the tunnels. She figures out that the war has only been going on for seven days, and that the tower they’re standing in is the original colonising spaceship that brought both humans and Hath to the planet. The story of the war’s origins may have been passed down through generations, but thanks to the cloning device and the war, each generation might only live a few hours. The whole thing is, as the Doctor says, like a game of Chinese Whispers. Man, there are so many plot holes in this episode. If all these generations have gone by in a week, why is Cobb an old man? Has he always been aware of the truth? Was he cloned into an older person rather than a teen? Did the Hath have a cloning thing too? Or are they aware it’s just been going on for a week?

Our heroes discover a lovely lush green-house containing the Source - a terraforming device obviously designed to make the planet’s bleak surface habitable, but just as they’re about to release it both the Hath and the humans arrive. The Doctor gives another heartfelt speech before releasing the terraform’s transformative powers and both sides drop their weapons - apart from Cobb, of course, who shoots at the Doctor. The bullet is stopped by the noble Jenny, who leaps in front of her father and then dies in his arms. It would be quite touching if she’d had more of a personality. Despite her two hearts, it looks like her Time Lordliness doesn’t extend to regeneration. An enraged Doctor holds Cobb at gunpoint for a scarily long time before lowering the gun and snarling “I never would!” That, he says, is how he wants this planet to remember him - as a man who never would. He, Martha and Donna head off glumly.

Martha gets dropped home, and Donna once more asserts her desire to stay with the Doctor. Martha gazes dreamily at her engagement ring and heads happily into the house. Does anyone really gaze at their relationship-related-jewellery whenever they think of the object of their affection? Goodbye, Martha! I hope some day you’ll return and get the decent plot you deserve. Also, you are ridiculously pretty.

Meanwhile, back on New Caprica or whatever the stupid planet is called, Jenny is being prepared for…burial? Cremation? Anyway, she suddenly breathes out sparkly mist and opens her eyes. “Hello, boys!” she says sassily as Chris from Skins and a random Hath stare in amazement. She then heads off to a convenient mini space pod announcing her intention to travel through space righting wrongs and doing “an awful lot of running.” I smell a perky, perky spin-off.

Next week: Agatha Christie! ’20s frocks! Hurrah!