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 #34: The Macra Terror

"Doctor, that was it - that thing in the picture! That was the claw!"

Episode 34:   The Macra Terror.
Companions: The 2nd Doctor, Polly Wright, Ben Jackson and Jamie McCrimmon.
Air Date:        Four episodes. 11th March to 1st April 1967.

When the Second Doctor, Polly, Ben and Jamie visit a human colony that appears to be one big holiday camp, they think they have come across a truly happy place. Yet a shadowy presence soon makes them realise that the surface contentment is carefully controlled.

The Macra Terror that is entirely missing, though an audio recording still exists along with a handful of screen images. Unfortunately although I've read two or three different synopsis for this story it is very difficult to tell whether it was a good or bad one. Some elements exist for both approaches. Hopefully one day an intact copy can be found.

The story features as it's villains a race of giant intelligent alien crabs called The Macra. The Macra require certain types of gases to breathe in order to live, and have enslaved the human population of a distant world to mine it for them from deep beneath the surface. At the time of this write up they have only reappeared once more (Gridlock) making them one of the villains with the lengthiest gap between appearances in the show, only beaten by The Great Intelligence.