SJA #7 : The Last Sontaran

"If every phenomenon reported as a UFO was in fact an alien spacecraft, I assure you the Earth would be at the centre of a solar gridlock stretching back to the outer rings of Saturn."

Episode #7:         The Last Sontaran.
Companions:       Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith, Maria Jackson, Clyde Langer, amd Mr Smith.
Air Date:             29th September to 6th October 2008.

Reports of strange lights around the Tycho Project's radio telescope lead Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria into a terrifying forest encounter. Sarah Jane comes face-to-face with her oldest enemy. Meanwhile, Maria wrestles with a huge decision when her dad is offered a new job in America.

The second series of the Sarah Jane Adventures kicks off with a great little two part story that features a Sontaran survivour from the Sontaran Strategem/Poison Sky episode of Doctor Who. One of the Sontarans survived and has been trapped on Earth looking for a way to escape and avenge his battle fleet. Sarah Jane and her friends must find a way to stop the alien before he destroys the world.

Unlike later on in the Whoniverse the Sontaran in this story isn't treated like a joke and feels quite reminiscent of the classic episodes that featured them. Kaagh is a clever opponent for a Whoniverse opponent who feels like he could actually defeat our heroes for a change.

This is the last episode to feature Maria Jackson as her character is leaving to live with her father in America. The actress gave up the show to focus on her exams and this was how her departure was explained in the show. I don't feel anything about the loss of the character as Maria Jackson never really stood out to me like the others do. She'll be replaced by a better character anyway.

The Last Sontaran is a good episode and definitely one of the better SJA adventures so far. It is better written than the previous adventures and doesn't come off as typical of children's television, in other words a little (appropriately) childish. It sets a nice new trend for the show, mostly.

Episode #204 : The Stolen Earth / Journey's End

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your Children of Time transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor. You made this."

Episode #204:     The Stolen Earth / Journey's End.
Companions:       10th Doctor, Donna Noble, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones and Gwen Cooper.
Air Date:             28th June to 5th July 2008.

When Earth and twenty-six other planets are stolen and taken to the Medusa Cascade and the Doctor is nowhere in sight, it's up to the combined forces of UNIT, Torchwood, Sarah Jane and Rose to fight off the thieves, who only have one thing to say to the resistance: "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" Davros and the New Dalek Empire prepare to detonate a bomb that will wipe out all of existence. The Tenth Doctor is helpless, and the TARDIS faces destruction. The only hope lies with the Doctor's companions — the "Children of Time" — but Dalek Caan predicts that one will die.

This story is a fan's dream. It brings together not just the Doctor and the Daleks, but brings back old companions from the new show as well as bringing in Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith. How cool is that? Having everyone together and sharing screen time reminds me of The Five Doctors. They come together to fight to defeat the Daleks.

The story ties together a lot of the elements that have appeared in the show since it was brought back on the air as well as wrapping up some elements of the Time War. The strong point for me is less so much that as the revelations presented by Davros about the Doctor and his companions. Davros points out something that perhaps we never considered. The Doctor may not condone violence but in truth his companions become soldiers to do that things that he couldn't usually bring himself to do. It is quite the revelation that has a huge emotional impact when Davros delivers it and shows the Doctor the truth that he might not otherwise accept.

It is great to see Davros again after so long. We learn that he did survive the events of Remembrance of the Daleks and even fought in the Time War itself. Davros created a new Dalek race from his own cells which seems to be a recurring factor in the Daleks these days.

There is one small bugbear for me with this episode. A lot of media attention was directed to the Doctor regenerating in this episode. In fact he does get exterminated by a Dalek and starts to regenerate. He heals using the regeneration energy and siphons the rest into his old hand that the Sycorax cut off. Now that is all fine but, and it is a big but as well as a spoiler, in the future episode The Time of the Doctor we learn that this counted towards the Doctor's regeneration limit. It's now established canon but it doesn't feel right to me as the regeneration doesn't complete so how does it count? But I can live with it. It just rubs me the wrong way a little bit.

At the end of the story all the companions go their own way again. Rose returns with the new Doctor to the Pete's World universe never to be seen again. Unfortunately this is the end of things for Donna. It all goes a bit wrong with the metacrisis and the Doctor is forced to remove any knowledge of him and their time again. It is a sad end for Donna that she spent all this time travelling with the Doctor and then it is all swept away from her.

Episode #203 : Turn Left

"The Doctor is dead. Must have happened too fast for him to regenerate."

Episode #203:         Turn Left.
Companions:           10th Doctor and Donna Noble.
Air Date:                 21st June 2008.

On the an alien planet, Donna meets a fortune teller, who launches her into a world based on one question: "What would happen if Donna never met the Tenth Doctor?" Without the Doctor, the whole world is in ruin, and a mysterious blonde tries to warn Donna of the oncoming darkness... Now a simple refugee, Donna is the only one who can undo the damage. But how?

Turn Left is a "what if" story. In this case we see what happens to the Earth and to Donna Noble if the Doctor was killed defeating the Rachnoss without Donna there to save him. The events we see unfold without his interference are the SS Titanic crashing into London, the Adipos (in the US rather than UK), and ATMOS. Without the Doctor there to save us everything goes very very wrong. The episode is Doctor lite to make up for the previous companion lite episode, Midnight. What causes all this? It is strongly hinted at that it is the work of the Trickster (or his Brigade) although he has yet to ever appear in an episode by this time.

Rose Tyler makes another appearance in this story alongside UNIT trying to fix the time line before everything goes pear shaped for good. She drops hints about the possible events that have been cropping up all season and we see the culmination in the following episode. The ending of the episode gives me goosebumps watching it when everything is revealed to the Doctor.

As an episode it isn't fantastic but likewise it isn't a bad story either. Not a lot actually happens in it but rather we see a world without the Doctor there to save it and how Donna's life would turn out. The pay out is more where the story leads at the end of it and where we go next.

Episode #202 : Midnight

"Ah, I'll be fine. Taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight... What could possibly go wrong?"

Episode #202:         Midnight.
Companions:           10th Doctor and Donna Noble.
Air Date:                 14th June 2008.

The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble go to the leisure planet of Midnight for a simple, relaxing vacation. However, life with the Doctor can never be that simple, and things go horribly wrong for the Doctor when he decides to go off on a bus trip to see the Sapphire Waterfall, starting with the bus shutting down. When a mysterious entity infiltrates the shuttle bus, no one is to be trusted. Not even the Doctor himself.

I'm never really sure what to make of this episode. On one hand nothing really happens and it just trundles along. On the other hand, it is delightfully disturbing and creepy. I think the problem is that you never actually see what the monster looks like or learn what it actually is. Less is often more but not in this case. As such I never really know how I should view the episode.

Partly I think that the problem is that tension is built up by having several characters trapped in an enclosed space paranoid and shouting at one another soon loses its power. It just becomes annoying instead after a while. I have the same opinion of similar situations in other disaster movies and shows.

Donna Noble only appears twice during this story as it focuses exclusively on the Doctor's adventure on board the train. In the next episode it swaps and Donna gets an adventure without the Doctor. As I understand it, this was done as a cost cutting endeavour and still occasionally happens in later seasons.

The episode features David Troughton, son of the second Doctor Patrick Troughton. He had previously appeared as King Peladon in The Curse of Peladon.

I'll leave this one to your devices to decide what you think of it.

Episode #201: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead

Episode #201:        Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead.
Companions:           10th Doctor and Donna Noble.
Air Date:                 31st May to 7th June 2008.

"When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can't run for ever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment, accepts it."

The Tenth Doctor takes Donna Noble to a planet-sized library in the 51st century. They find it empty of human life, with a final recorded message: "4,022 saved, no survivors." As an archaeological expedition arrives, lead by the mysterious Professor River Song, they can only give one piece of advice: count the shadows.

Steven Moffat, future head man of the show, returns with a blinding spooky episode. Whatever we may feel about the man these days it cannot be denied that he knows how to write the proper spooky episodes. In Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead we see how time travelers drawn to a planet sized library where there are no people. It has been a hundred years since everything went wrong and everyone vanished. Now, am archaeological team has come to investigate and things have begun to awaken.

In this adventure we are introduced to a new character by the name of River Song. At this point we know very little about her other than she knows the Doctor's real name and that she knows him from his future in another incarnation. I won't spoil anything yet but as the Doctor says, there is only one time he could give someone his name.

Interestingly we never really see the monsters of this story, instead we see the walking dead of their feeding. Maybe not as scary as the Weeping Angels but creepy all the same especially as we are told that they are all around us in the dark...

The end of the story comes with a beautiful and emotional ending where the Doctor loses someone oh so important and has to come to terms with it. Even when we get a sad ending there is always something positive that comes out of it. The show hasn't had that for a long time and it is good ending for the episode.

Episode #200 : The Unicorn and the Wasp

Donna: It's a murder, a mystery and Agatha Christie!
The Doctor: So? Happens to me all the time.
Donna: I know but isn't that a bit weird? Agatha Christie didn't walk around surrounded by murders, not really. That's like meeting Charles Dickens surrounded by ghosts at Christmas!

Episode #200:         The Unicorn and the Wasp.
Companions:           10th Doctor and Donna Noble.
Air Date:                 17th May 2008.

In 1926, Agatha Christie mysteriously disappears, only to be found ten days later at Harrogate Hotel with no memory of what happened to her. What could have been the cause? Was it a nervous breakdown? Was it a cry for help? Or did it involve a giant alien wasp and a mysterious stranger known only as the Doctor?

This is how you do a proper historical story in Doctor Who. Take an actual real world mystery, a famous celebrity (of their day) and add a nice but not over the top science fiction spin. Making it appear like a typical Agatha Christie style mystery is just the icing on the cake. This is exactly what we have here. The show has needed a proper investigative mystery for a long time and The Unicorn and the Wasp comes in almost perfectly. The only thing that lets it down is some of the typical silly elements common to the David Tennant era but it is so infrequent here that it is easy to let it slide.

The episode plays on all the typical references we expect from a 1920's murder mystery set in the English countryside. Twenty three of Agatha Christie's novels or short stories are referenced throughout the episode. I didn't spot all of them at the time and had to look them up afterwards. In that sense the episode is much like The Shakespeare Code which also has many references to the works of the titular character.

There is very little to let this episode down, and yes I know I am focusing on the negative here but it is difficult for me to do otherwise here. We have some silly elements such as a the Doctor performing charades to give clues to Donna after he has been poisoned and seeking a cure. I'm also not a fan of the effects used to generate the insectoid villain of the story. Having seen in Doctor Who and other programmes just how good the BBC has gotten at it's computer effects it could have looked and moved a lot better. Nit picking, I agree, but it does for me affect the rating that I have given it though not by much. The Unicorn and the Wasp is no where near being a 5* adventure. It is however, certainly one that I recommend.

Episode #199 : The Doctor's Daughter

"He saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures... and runs a lot. Seriously, there is an outrageous amount of running involved."

Episode #199:         The Doctor's Daughter.
Companions:           10th Doctor, Donna Noble and Martha Jones.
Air Date:                 10th May 2008.

Just after finally defeating the Sontarans on modern-day Earth, the Doctor's TARDIS takes the Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble and Martha Jones on an unexpected trip to the planet Messaline. Arriving right in the middle of a war between humans and Hath, the Doctor meets someone he thought he never would: his daughter. Can the Doctor accept this clone as his offspring, and can he stop the war before it all ends in massacre on both sides?

It is always nice to see interaction between old companions and new. With the threat of the Sontarans out of the way the Doctor drags Donna and Martha off into time and space. Although they do get split up after a while there is some fun interaction similar to, but more serious than, when Rose Tyler and Sarah Jane Smith met back in School Reunion.

The biggest plot element that had people talking about the episode all week before it was shown was the trailer reference to "hi dad" and the episode title. I had hoped, against hope, that it would be his direct daughter - Susan's mother. But alas, that was not to be. Sometimes I do wish we could just get some direct continuity back to Susan but I doubt now that it will happen. Instead, Jenny, is a clone creation made by a machine. She is programmed to be a soldier, which makes the Doctor distrust her immediately, and it takes Donna to force him to see her as his own flesh and blood. I won't spoil the ending where Jenny is concerned but we need a repeat appearance or her own spin off show.

As you are already probably aware Georgia Moffatt who plays Jenny is the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison. So technically she is the Doctor's daughter, who is married to the Doctor (David Tennant) and has had the Doctor's daughter. Timey whimey.

As an episode, the Doctor's Daughter isn't bad but it feels somewhat cheap in places as though this was the runt of the series. It is a story that doesn't really go anywhere and perhaps may have been better as a classic era story spanning three or four parts. It is the problem with many modern episodes though and by now I should be used to it.