Episode #184 : Gridlock

"I lied to you, 'cause I liked it. I could pretend, just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive... underneath that burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord, I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else."

Episode #184:  Gridlock.
Companions:   The 10th Doctor and Martha Jones.
Air Date:          14th April 2007.

The Tenth Doctor takes Martha Jones to New Earth, in the far future, only to find that the entire city has become a deadly trap.

Gridlock is a bit of a disappointment for me. Rather than be a fully fleshed out episode we instead receive a filler story. It does set things up for the end of the season but that is tacked on to the end of the episode. The story itself just deals with the Doctor taking Martha to New Earth some time after his visit with Rose. She gets "kidnapped" and the Doctor chases through the underground highway to recover her. Once rescued we get a nice moment where he explains more about the Time War than we had before. It also reintroduces the Macra, though in a devolved form and they do not play a real part in the story. Everything about this story is just there to set up the "you are not alone" reference.

There is only two elements to this story that I fine entertaining. One is the various drivers on the highway and their own idiosyncrasies - a married woman and her catkind husband with their kittens, a pair of married old grannies and the rest. The other is the Doctors explanation to Martha at the end of the episode.

Gridlock is not even close to being the worst story out there but it is real waste of an episode. Had there been something more to it then my opinion would probably be very different. There just isn't enough to this story to make it worth while.

Episode #171 : New Earth

Novice Hame: One story says that just before his death, the Face of Boe will impart his greatest secret. He will speak those words only to one like himself.

The Doctor: What does that mean?

Novice Hame: It's just a story.

The Doctor: Tell me the rest.

Novice Hame: It is said he will talk to a wanderer, to the man without a home, a lonely god.

Episode 171:   New Earth.
Companions:   10th Doctor and, Rose Tyler.
Air Date:          15th April 2006.

In the distant future, an order of cat-nuns cure all illnesses, but the Tenth Doctor is suspicious of their methods. He must uncover the truth and save Rose from the vengeance of his old enemy, the Lady Cassandra.

The Doctor and Rose travel to New Earth, a replacement to the Earth that we have already seen destroyed in The End of the World. The Doctor has been drawn here by the Face of Boe who is supposedly dying. Something not quite right draws the time travellers into a scheme by the resident cat people to heal all known diseases but at the expense of created lives. New Earth is not a bad story but I feel it is let down a little in places by pacing, dialogue and lack of get up and go.

The catkind look amazing. This is the first time that I can say that an alien species on Doctor Who actually looks real rather than a person in a suit. Major thumbs up to the make up department for this. Are they are more evolved version of the cat folk from Survival? Don't know but I can't imagine that two species of humanoid feline evolved in the galaxy. I like to think that they are the same species.

Cassandra returns but not as the villain. She certainly has greed on her mind and is selfish but ends up assisting the Doctor after projecting her mind into Rose's body seeking a new life in a real body. Her appearance does seem tacked on but it is made up for by giving her a decent send off at the end.

The Doctor's personality seems to have brightened up since The Christmas Invasion and he's a much more likable character now. The beaming smile means you can't help but begin to like him.

I think the reason why I'm not so keen on New Earth is that it is yet another filler episode. While it is self contained it appears to exist purely to set up events at the culmination of a later season. I have always hated filler stories in TV shows.

Episode #158 : Survival

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do."

Episode 158:    Survival.
Companions:   7th Doctor and Ace.
Air Date:          22nd November to 6th December 1989.

The Doctor takes Ace to present day Perivale so that she can revisit old friends. Most of them however have been transported by cat-like Kitlings to the planet of the Cheetah People, a race with the power to teleport through space. Ace is transported and joins up with two of her friends, Midge and Shreela, and a boy named Derek. The Doctor follows and encounters the Master, who has drawn him into a trap to try to gain his help. This planet gradually transforms its inhabitants into Cheetah People - an influence to which the Master himself has fallen victim - while they in turn, through the savagery of their actions, cause the planet to move ever closer to total destruction.

The final ever episode of the classic series comes crashing down after the excellent couple of previous stories. Survival is just poor both in story and in production values. The kitling (above) and the cheetah people costumes are just plain bad. No one thought about spending much on this story and it spoils it so very much.

The Master makes his final classic era appearance here and it feels so much like that his inclusion was simply tacked on for the sake of it. At least in Survival he isn't up to some nefarious but ill-thought out scheme. He is out to escape the planet of the cheetah people and free himself from the transformation into a cat.

Survival is another adventure where Ace gets the centre stage with much of the events being plotted around her. The Doctor however seems to have lost something in this one. Gone is the intelligent and manipulative Time Lord from recent stories and in his place is a more incompetent investigator. Disappointing to be say the least.

It is a shame that the classic show died with this as the final episode. It deserved better. The problem is however that since the end of the Tom Baker era there had been a severe drop in the production values of the show. The look of the show has often been cited as one of the reasons that the show was cancelled by the BBC. Survival is a perfect example of that.