Story #194 - The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008)

Harry -
Ah, a Doctor Whodunnit with special guest detective Agatha Christie. What a treat!


Sarah -
A whodunnit at the country estate of retired impresario Henry Gordon Jago! (It’s my head cannon, so go with it.)


Harry -
The timing might line up just about right.


Sarah -
It’s lovely to have Christopher Benjamin back on the team!


Harry -
After putting Donna through several wringers, the TARDIS finally lands somewhere grand. "Never mind planet Zog. A party in the 1920s, that's more like it!"

And so she and the Doctor play party crashers and join the gathering guests at an Edwardian manor home. The set up was classic, as one by one we meet the cast of characters as they arrive for Colonel Hugh and Lady Clemency's garden party. It was so great to see Benjamin make his return, even if his colonel was bound to a wheelchair. Here come the others: the curious Professor Peach, the cheery Reverend Golightly, the glamorous Robina Redmond, young Roger Curbishley and the very attendant attendant, Davenport, and the guest of honour, Agatha Christie!

Gobsmacked, Donna and the Doctor barely get a chance to say hello before a cry of "murder!" rings out. Miss Chandrakala has found a body in the library, and the mystery begins.

There's something so quaint about a British murder mystery. The historic setting, the engaging characters, and the intrigue of a Christie plot. Even though someone is already dead, it still feels like a holiday.


Sarah -
Despite the corpses, this story is an opportunity to catch a mid-series breath before we plunge into the rest of the series -- and we’re going to need it.

"The Unicorn and the Wasp" isn’t meant to be more than a romp and I have to admit I enjoyed the rewatch more than I expected. My memories of it weren’t terribly positive. The wasp is a little dodgy, but this is Doctor Who, after all, and Graeme Harper’s direction more than makes up for any challenges in the production.


Harry -
Graeme Harper can spin mud into gold, and he did it again here. Lots of quick cuts, interesting angles and nonstop pace.  If this is the only light story of the season, so be it.


Sarah -
Fenella Woolgar is an excellent Agatha Christie in our latest celebrity historical. I always have mixed feelings about these stories. It’s fun to see the TARDIS team interact with characters we know (or think we know), but things can quickly get annoying -- Rose trying to get Queen Victoria to say, “We are not amused,” the Doctor feeding lines to Shakespeare, etc. There are a few of those moments in this story, which I guess are inevitable.


Harry -
What I liked here was that the Doctor didn't immediately take over and dominate, with everyone trying to keep up. It felt like there was a distinct lack of chemistry between the Doctor and Agatha. She was perplexed by his rapid fire outbursts, but not swayed, and kept pursuing her own lines of investigation.

You are right about the wasp. It was too out of place because of its oversized scale and made the story too much of a fantasy. Perhaps if they had made the alien into a swarm of wasps instead of just one giant one, that might have worked better and upped the horror. Once the big bug lost its stinger, it lost its most threatening feature and it was just a matter of time before it got killed. After the hilarious kitchen detox scene, I expected the Doctor to return and whip up some kind of bug killing powder.


Sarah -
The detox scene is classic David Tennant.


Harry -
One of the few Doctors who can pull off that kind of manic physical comedy.

After a merry round around the house and a couple of close calls, we get to the traditional reveal scene. It played out very traditionally, with some funny moments to keep it light. The unicorn was exposed as -- gasp! -- none other than the glamorous (and actually very cockney) Robina. It's funny how in North American film and television a criminal is often made more villainous by giving them a received British accent, while in actual Britain, the criminals are often given cockney accents.

Anyway, shock horror, the real killer is a gigantic alien wasp. Run away!

And everyone scatters as Reverand Golightly morphs back into the Vespiform.  Christie drives off to a nearby lake, providing Donna with the setting to kill off the alien by drowning it.  With the menace defeated, Christie passes out with amnesia and the mystery of her 10-day disappearance is sorted.  

All of that to demonstrate why British people never call the police after a murder.


Sarah -
It’s been a fun romp, but now I’m ready for a library visit. Onward?


Harry -
I believe the term "game changer" was coming into popularity everywhere around this time, and we are about to run into one of Doctor Who's all-time game changers.  Let's do it!


Sarah -
Best Line: 
Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie.
Donna: What about her?
Agatha Christie: That’s me.
Donna: No! You’re kidding!

Favorite Moment: 
The detox scene

Lasting Image: 
Donna in her 20s garb.

6/10


Harry -
Best Line:
DOCTOR: A terrible day for all of us. The Professor struck down, Miss Chandrakala taken cruelly from us, and yet we still take dinner.
CLEMENCY: We are British, Doctor. What else must we do?

Favourite Moment: 
The detox scene for sure.

Lasting Image: 
Agatha and the Doctor conducting their investigation.

7/10

Our marathon continues into a new decade with Story #195: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead...

Story #193 - The Doctor's Daughter (2008)

Harry -
Well it's not every day you see the Doctor get slapped in the face with a whole new perspective on life, this time courtesy of the ladies around him.

Naturally, Donna is there. And so is the Doctor's daughter. Freeze frame! Record scratch! The Doctor's what?

This cold open has to be the most bonkers in all of Nu Who. The TARDIS is roaring through time and space. The Doctor clings to the console along with not one but two of his recent companions, Donna and Martha. They land in a blighted tunnel, and are immediately seized by Grunts With Guns. The Doctor's arm is forced into a piece of machinery. Bingo Bango Bongo, a woman emerges out of a smoky chamber and says "Hello Dad." I mean really, where can it go from here?


Sarah -
Just another day in the TARDIS. But we can’t really blame her when she is, in fact, the Doctor’s Daughter -- the Fifth Doctor’s daughter, that is. Georgia Moffett, soon to be Georgia Tennant in this timeline, gives a spirited performance as the Doctor’s progeny. She shares his DNA and love of adventure.


Harry -
This is becoming a season of reunions, crossovers and familial attachments on multiple levels. The Davison-Moffett-Tennant mashup is something Steven Moffat might have concocted in his idle imaginings.


Sarah - 
I’m pretty sure all Doctor Who since 2005 is fans-turned-showrunners fulfilling their idle imaginings.


Harry -
What stood out most in this story was the Doctor going through a fairly standard adventure in a "colony in space" (obligatory Pertwee era shout out), but instead of wide-eyed companions in distress, he's surrounded by a team of speak-no-bullshit and take-no-prisoners types.


Sarah -
These people don’t play! Jenny is ready for battle from the moment of her creation.


Harry -
It begins right after the template separation of characters, when Martha is trapped behind a wall of rubble after the Doctor's "daughter" triggers an explosion in the tunnel in order to stave off an assault by an alien attack force. The explosion separates the two groups of combatants, and she then waves off the loss of a newcomer as collateral damage. Donna rounds on her immediately. "Her name's Martha. And she's not collateral damage, not for anyone. Have you got that, G.I. Jane?" Raging Donna is my favourite Donna.


Sarah -
You do not mess with Donna Noble.


Harry -
The Doctor announces that they are going to find Martha. Meanwhile, Martha makes a friend. It is through her eyes that we will experience the other side of this mysterious underground conflict. During the cave-in, one of the aliens suffered a dislocated shoulder. A doctor herself, Martha pops the shoulder back in and wins the favour of the Hath, a race of humanoid fish. As aliens go, I liked the design of the Hath, with their bubbling water tanks and soft expressions.

A parallel story ensues, with the Doctor and Martha leading the two separated trails back together.

Before we get there, the "daughter" gets some more character development. And I'm not sure she was all that likeable at the start. Despite containing the Doctor's DNA, her mind is programmed to remember only military history and tactics, making her a mindless instrument of war. As the Doctor and Donna learn more about the colony, it seems war is the only business here.


Sarah -
I like the way Jenny advocates for her own humanity while the Doctor dismisses her as soldier. I probably shouldn’t say humanity, as she does have two hearts and all. It’s like an episode of Jerry Springer meets Doctor Who -- “Yes, you are the father!”

The Doctor insists Jenny’s just an echo and being a Time Lord is so much more, which leads to more Gallifrey angst.

Martha and the Hath end up outside while Donna is paying attention to the numbers that are counting down as they proceed. She’s trying to crack the code, using her admin skills. The numbers are dates of completion for each section and the war has only been going on for seven days, with 20 generations per day. This is probably my favorite thing in this story -- that’s some proper sci-fi.


Harry -
Really the whole story plays out with the Doctor as a companion to the others.

Donna cracking the code reveals the reality of the situation. After losing her Hath friend to a pit of quicksand, Martha finds her own way back. And Jenny uses her physical skills to free everyone and guide them to the mysterious location on the map that everyone was driving towards. The Doctor still got to deliver his usual lines about hating guns and being the last of his kind, but he was just along for the ride.


Sarah -
I would be down with the Adventures of Martha, Donna, and Jenny as its own series.


Harry -
Everyone descends on the mysterious location and, as Donna quipped, it was something out of Kew Gardens. Lush plants and greenery. The source they were seeking out is a massive terraforming machine that was set up before hostilities between the clones broke out.


Sarah -
It feels magical after all the war and corridors and such.


Harry -
The pointlessness of the war becomes evident, and everyone in the colony can get back to their original mission and build a settlement on this planet. The Doctor declares the war to be over.

Unfortunately, General Cobb refuses to stand down. He takes aim and fires at the Doctor. Jenny steps in front of him and takes the bullet. Despite his attitudes earlier, the Doctor is devastated by her death. Cobb is presumably arrested and the colony begins to put itself back on course.

Jenny's body is left with the colonists, as the TARDIS takes off. Martha goes home and Donna continues her travels with the Doctor.

Back on the colony planet, Jenny suddenly revives. The mix of human and Gallifreyan DNA has produced someone who cannot regenerate, but can still come back to life. Having heard Donna's stories of travel through the stars, Jenny takes off in a spaceship to explore the universe.


Sarah -
I would like an alternate-universe series when Jenny joins the Doctor and Donna in the TARDIS for years of adventures. They’d have so much fun!


Harry -
And as far as we know she's still out there. Doctor Who has a knack for bringing everyone back eventually, so maybe we'll see her again.


Sarah -
I was disappointed Jenny never turned up again, but Big Finish has given Jenny her own life to live, so I won’t complain too much.


Harry -
I liked this story. It had some hard science elements, a far future setting, lots of dark settings, interesting aliens and fascinating exchanges between the main characters.


Sarah -
It’s a solid, pacey story that was better than I remembered. Ready to meet Agatha Christie?


Harry -
Best Line:
JENNY: So what do you do?
DOCTOR: I travel through time and space.
DONNA: He saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures. And runs a lot. Seriously, there's an outrageous amount of running involved.

Favourite Moment: Jenny blasts off for adventure.

Lasting Image: the Hath.

8/10


Sarah -
Best Line: Donna to the Doctor:  “You talk all the time, but you don't say anything.”

Favorite Moment: When Donna tells Martha she’s going to travel with the Doctor forever. It’s bittersweet, but it fills me with so much love for Donna. 

Lasting Image: Jenny. She’s just adorable. 

6/10

Our marathon continues with Story #194: The Unicorn and the Wasp...

Story #192: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky (2008)

Harry -
As we kicked off the DoctorDonna season, I was interested to see what my reaction would be when we got around to this two-parter.

"The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky" had an asterisk stuck to it virtually from the moment it was announced. Helen Raynor was the writer who gave us "Daleks in Manhattan" the season before -- a story that ranks very low among Whovians, us included. There were a lot of things that went wrong with that one, but Raynor bore the brunt of it. There's a section in The Writer's Tale where Russell T. Davies recounts the night when that story was first broadcast and received instant condemnation online. Really nasty stuff, as only a fandom could deliver. Raynor was shaken by the experience, but to his credit RTD backed her up and asked her back for another story. At the time I remember being wary of another story coming from this writer. When it first aired, I remember not being overly impressed, but not feeling as negative as I had over the Dalek story.

That's why I was looking forward to watching it again a decade later. Do you remember any of the buildup to this story?


Sarah -
I have to admit that don’t remember much about the anticipation of this story. While "Daleks in Manhattan" is my all-time, least-favorite Doctor Who story, "The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky" is a solid story. It’s not the best of the season, but it’s far from the worst.

Perhaps the story’s biggest weakness is its lack of originality. There are few tropes left unturned in this two-parter, but I still enjoyed it because a good trope never bothers me!


Harry -
I seem to say this a lot, but this one felt like a Pertwee-era throwback. Once again, we see a collision of alien invaders and rogue technology, with an action-heavy TARDIS team coming to the rescue. And UNIT!


Sarah -
I think you’re right. It’s very Pertwee-ish and that’s probably what I like about it.

The story begins with journalist Jo Nakashima being thrown out of the Rattigan Academy. She drives away in her car, which is fitted with ATMOS (Atmospheric Omission System), a device that reduces carbon emissions and includes a GPS. Jo is suspicious of ATMOS, which has been developed at the Rattigan Academy, founded by Luke Rattigan. While she’s trying to contact UNIT, Jo’s car drives itself into a river, where it sinks with her inside.


Harry -
I wonder how many GPS-skeptics watched that and went "I knew it!"


Sarah -
Right? This is not the first Doctor Who story to take a common item and make it terrifying. This trope will reach its zenith in the Steven Moffat era, but RTD has a strong record of making us question technology. It’s hard to believe this story predates the smartphone era, but a GPS system was definitely a fancy thing to have in 2008. And who wouldn’t want a device that reduces carbon emissions? That said, I was really happy not to have a GPS after watching this story.


Harry -
I'll stick with paper maps and/or my uncanny sense of direction, and I don't care who knows it.


Sarah -
If we’re not already knee-deep in tropes, bring on Rattigan. (Some signaling going on with that name? I just referred to him as Ratt in my notes.) Oh, look, another stupid human who thinks he’s going to partner up with aliens and come out ahead. He’s Tobias Vaughn all over again -- but without the charisma.


Harry -
I remember HATING Rattigan the first time around. So obnoxious and condescending. The only redeeming thing about him were his cool Pumas.

But this time around, with the Doctor's helpful observations, I saw the struggling smart kid beneath the bratty exterior. Still, he was woefully over his head with the aliens and all-too-willing to sell out the planet to chase his own utopian visions. So yeah, I still hated him.


Sarah -
He’s one of those characters with whom you can almost empathize when they get their comeuppance, which is definitely on its way.


Harry -
Amid all of this scene-setting, RTD and Raynor treat us to a fantastic mid-season reunion. A phone rings inside the TARDIS, and it's Martha. She calls the Doctor back to contemporary Earth, and the TARDIS lands outside the ATMOS factory. No sooner have the Doctor and Martha welcomed each other, and Donna and the Martha immediately struck up a companions friendship, than the scene is interrupted by a UNIT raid.


Sarah -
Martha and Donna immediate becoming besties is flat out my favorite thing in this story. The Doctor almost looks disappointed that they’re not fighting over him. Big Finish should develop a Donna and Martha series. I would be all over that.


Harry -
How about UNIT! Oh, it was a thrill to see a 21st century UNIT roll into action. Very butch, with heavy vehicles and waves of troopers in black uniform swarming all over the facility and a mobile command centre overseeing the assault. Long gone are the days when Benton and three other grunts would charge an alien menace by themselves.


Sarah -
If they still had Benton, UNIT wouldn’t need all that gear to fight the aliens. There’s something to be said for homespun.


Harry -
With the Brigadier in Peru, the UNIT operation is headed by Colonel Mace, a very by-the-book officer who greets the Doctor with a salute. The Doctor cringes at this, but Donna happily requests a salute of her own. Throughout the story, the Doctor and Mace will keep up some back and forth heckling over each other's ideologies. One of the things that felt overdone in this story was the Doctor repeatedly whinging about salutes and guns. He's right of course, but his "OH DON'T SALUTE" and "WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT GUNS" lines were repetitive. Mace, meanwhile was unable to break from the military code ingrained in his own personality. The story bounced along at such a rapid pace that there was no room to explore his character more fully, nor for he and the Doctor to reach more than a superficial understanding of one another.


Sarah -
While the Doctor is faffing about with Mace, Donna puts her temp skills to work and discovers that there has never been a sick day at the ATMOS factory. Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.


Harry -
I love how Donna's HR knowledge comes in handy throughout this season. It turns out there's a lot of weird stuff going down at the ATMOS facility. The Doctor discovers that while ATMOS is carbon-friendly, it is also capable of turning 800 million cars into weapons at the disposal of whomever controls the ATMOS devices. We the viewers also discover -- through the explorations of two UNIT soldiers -- that there's some kind of homunculus being grown inside a bubbling tank down in the basement.

The soldiers' presence triggers an alarm. The aliens behind the scheme decide to show themselves. Their leader beams down to confront the soldiers, and we are given our first glimpse of RTD's 21st century Sontarans in the person of General Staal.


Sarah -
Christopher “Mike Thecoolperson” Ryan is back, UNIT b*tches! Twenty-two years after his triumph in Mindwarp, Lord Kiv is here to give us Sontaran realness. I wouldn’t call it pulling for the baddies, but this Trial of Time Lord fan girl will always have her biases.


Harry -
Ryan's Doctor Who resume spans the classic era to the Tennant years, but he's always been submerged under layers of alien makeup. Hopefully he'll get to play a human someday... unless he prefers wild aliens.


Sarah -
Still, Staal and I can never be friends because he’s used the UNIT soldiers to lure our dear Martha Jones to the basement where she’s cloned onto the creature in the tank!


Harry -
Sontarans doing Sontaran things. I did like how the New Who Sontarans were given fresh uniforms and the quickest of backstories without getting bogged down in details. One of the weaknesses of the Classic Who Sontarans was that, considering they are a clone race, their appearance and voices kept changing from story to story. And I'm almost positive that they were made to look like giants in one of the classic stories.

Here, they really play up their militaristic imperatives. Staal can barely contain his lust for war.


Sarah -
Meanwhile, after a chat with Martha in which she reveals that her family suffered because she didn’t tell them about her relationship with the Doctor, Donna decides she needs to check in on Wilf and Sylvia. When she tells the Doctor she’s going home, he goes into a long spiel thanking her for traveling with him and telling her how much their time together meant to him. Enjoying the moment, Donna lets him wind himself up before he realizes that she’s only planning to go home for a visit. Tennant and Tate play this scene perfectly.


Harry -
"You dumbo." That was brilliantly done.


Sarah -
While Donna pops off, the Doctor heads to the Rattigan Academy with Ross, a UNIT private.


Harry -
At this point in the RTD era, I'm not going to bother wondering why yet another companion mum got painted as a negative character. Wilf and Donna are thick as thieves and she tells him all about space, aliens, and her adventures with the Doctor, while Sylvia is a big ball of misery in the background. Whatever.


Sarah -
It’s one of my least-favorite aspects of his era.


Harry -
The Doctor's confrontation with the Ratt having gone nowhere, and having escaped a near-fatal act of vehicular death by ATMOS, he joins the Nobles just in time for the part one cliffhanger. Their cover blown, the Sontarans trigger poison gas to pour out of every ATMOS-equipped vehicle on Earth. Wilf is trapped inside the family car just as he was moving it out of the street. The episode ends with a nice shot of a frustrated Doctor silhouetted against a sunlit sky filling with poison gas.

Wilf begins to choke on the fumes and Donna pounds on the side window in futility, when Sylvia appears out of nowhere with a firefighter's axe (!) and smashes the windshield open. I feel like I really need a firefighter's axe in the home now.


Sarah -
Sylvia saves the day while everyone else is running around in circles! That’s the woman you want around in an emergency.


Harry -
Crisis averted for the moment, but the Sontarans have only just begun their war footing. With their never-before-heard "Sontar Ha!" chants ringing out, they snatch the TARDIS and beam it up to their mother ship as war booty. The Pertwee-era throwback is now complete: the Doctor is stranded on Earth and must work with UNIT to repel an alien invasion.


Sarah -
When Ratt starts chanting "Sontar Ha!" along with the Sontarans, he looks like the lonely kid tagging along at the edge of the popular group. Trying to fit in with the aliens after all of his students walked out on him felt so sad this time around.


Harry -
In the Doctor's absence, UNIT has ramped things up at a ludicrous rate and are preparing to launch nuclear missiles from all over the Earth (including North Korea, hmmm...).

Clone Martha is the Sontarans' eyes and ears at UNIT HQ, but the Doctor knows she's not real. He's barely holding things together during the nuclear countdown as UNIT soldiers get massacred in the ATMOS factory and it is Donna who is forced to take the bravest action ever. Having been teleported into the Sontaran ship while inside the TARDIS, Donna must sneak outside, slip past an assortment of Sontarans and teleport the TARDIS back to Earth.  I would crack for sure.


Sarah -
That’s our girl! She more than earned her TARDIS key in this story.


Harry -
UNIT counterpunches by bringing in the Valiant to clear the skies over London, setting up the final confrontation between the Doctor and Staal aboard the Sontaran ship.


Sarah -
The Valiant is quite the ship. UNIT really has come a long way.


Harry -
Normally, I'm not a fan of stories that are resolved by someone committing suicide to foil the enemy, but it kind of worked here. The character was Rattigan, whose utopian fantasy was shattered by Staal's revelation that they were all a pack of lies to enlist his cooperation in the betrayal of Earth. The Sontarans had no plans to aid him in creating a new human colony on a distant planet. Instead, they intended to purge the Earth of all life and turn it into a clone hatchery. Devastated beyond recovery, Rattigan rigged up a final teleport to switch places with the Doctor and blow himself up, taking all the aliens down with him.

Overall I'd say this two-parter has aged well over the years.


Sarah -
Who doesn’t love a redemption story? Heartstrings are pulled again when clone Martha dies, having met the real Martha, whose memories she has.


Harry -
That's another moment where I would have cracked.  Imagine watching yourself die.  How do you bounce back from that?


Sarah -
With order restored, Martha plans to head back to her life when the TARDIS door slams and she, Donna, and the Doctor are swept off to another adventure.


Harry -
This whirlwind season is really picking up now.  Let's see where they land next.


Sarah -
Best Line: "Yeah, long time ago. Back in the 70's. Or was it the 80's? But it was all a bit more homespun back then."

Favorite Moment: Donna and Martha’s meeting

Lasting Image: the new Sontaran look

6/10


Harry -
Best Line: I'll stick with "You Dumbo."  It captures that great kind of partnership where one person can insult the other but totally not mean it.

Favourite Moment: modern-day UNIT rolls into action

Lasting Image: pathetic Rattigan with the Sontarans

7/10

Our marathon continues with Story #193: The Doctor's Daughter...

Story #191 - Planet of the Ood (2008)

Sarah -
It's interesting timing that we watched this story in the month that marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in North America. When we first met the Ood in "The Impossible Planet", they were presented as a race of empathetic servants, not the actual chattel slaves they are. I guess it's all in the marketing. It's been a while since I've watched "Planet of the Ood", so my sense of horror was almost as fresh as the first time.


Harry -
We spent so much time waiting for the DoctorDonna era. "It will be loads of fun!" we told ourselves. Whew! No fun to be had here on the Ood Sphere. Even Donna starts having second thoughts.


Sarah -
What a situation for Donna to find herself in on her first-ever alien planet. After raiding the TARDIS wardrobe for a warm winter coat, she and the Doctor discover an Ood, Delta Fifty, that has been shot. Donna keeps him talking while the Doctor examines him, but Delta Fifty doesn't last long.


Harry -
We watched Delta Fifty use its translator ball to murder a corporate honcho before fleeing into the snow. The Ood was just one of thousands that are raised, processed and shipped out around three galaxies for use as docile servants. From the opening death scenes, there is a dark strain to this story. This is one of the more uncomfortable ones to watch, but that's the point. "Planet of the Ood" reminded me of the Pertwee-era stories of Malcolm Hulke with their strong moral tone. It's something that has been largely missing in the new era of Who so far.


Sarah -
I hadn’t thought of it, but you’re spot on about its Hulke-ish feeling. Mac, of course, would have been even more excoriating.


Harry -
The story jumps between the corporate enterprise that humans have established on this planet (with a marketing session that is getting underway), and the DoctorDonna's infiltration and investigation.

The guest cast is mostly forgettable except for Tim McInnerny. Beloved as goofy Percy on the Blackadder series, here he plays the vile CEO of the enterprise.


Sarah -
I commented to Mr. Smith on the casting of McInnerny and that, really, Percy should never have been left in charge of anything.


Harry -
Percy is a beloved character from our younger days, so seeing McInnerny play a villain was a jarring surprise, especially as he pulled it off brilliantly.


Sarah -
He really worked the rat-bastard vibes, didn’t he?


Harry -
The fact that he inherited this family business seems to give him licence to be extra vile. Arriving after a string of recent deaths onsite, he is there in person to get to the bottom of things. In between gulps of hair tonic, he reacts in disgust to the news that a group of Ood have become infected with a red-eye disease that makes them volatile. He rages at his employees and orders that a rabid Ood be shot dead.

Donna is all of us, reacting with growing horror as she and the Doctor investigate the facility, finding Ood cowering in cages and locked in shipping containers. The Ood keep telling them that "the circle must be broken" but the meaning of the message eludes them.


Sarah -
The circle must be broken so they can sing, but Donna is the only one who is listening.


Harry -
Breaking the circle is the ongoing theme of the Ood plight, and it takes some further investigating for the DoctorDonna to figure it out. I don't think I've watched this story since the original broadcast because the suffering of the Ood was very heavy. Slavery and the Holocaust bound together with grisly scenes of captivity and violence. Watching it again this time, it has lost none of its impact. Donna's distress over it all is completely relatable.


Sarah -
I’m sure I haven’t watched it since first broadcast. I didn’t remember much these many years later, so the story definitely hit me. What I did remember was Donna’s general awesomeness and her defense of the Ood.


Harry -
Being Donna, however, she turns that distress into rage against the corporate monstrosity that brought this all about.


Sarah -
Donna don’t play. Everyone else may be willing to stand by, but Donna is having none of it. This is why Donna is still my favorite companion of the current era.


Harry -
The final showdown features some more gross-out moments. The Oods have been kept passive and subservient because their hive brain is imprisoned inside Warehouse 15. With all hell breaking loose and the Ood rampaging, McInnerny's villain orders it to be destroyed with explosives. The DoctorDonna save the day, and McInnerny meets his fate: the hair tonic that he's been chugging has been prepared by the Ood, and now comes their terrible revenge: he converts into the very thing he has exploited and abused.


Sarah -
That is definitely playing the long game!


Harry -
The Ood being wonderful, they take him in as one of their own now.


Sarah -
Because it’s the right thing to do.


Harry -
And they are free to sing!


Sarah -
Huzzah!


Harry -
I found the singing voices didn't quite line up with the Ood's speaking voices, but then they are aliens. The story ends with some tasty foreshadowing, as the Doctor is told that his song will soon end. He makes a face and swings back inside the TARDIS.


Sarah -
And so begins the drama of the Tenth Doctor. So much kvetching about his coming regeneration. I’ll do my best not to dwell on it too much. Probably.


Harry -
This story was pretty much as I remembered. It's not an enjoyable watch. RTD and writer Keith Temple took us to a dark corner of the universe.

So after three adventures with lots of traumatic scenes and near-death experiences, Donna has been put through the wringer and then some. I always think of her season as a fun one, but hopefully the fun starts soon.


Sarah -
It’s a solid story with an excellent performance by Catherine Tate. Ready for some Sontarans?


Harry -
Best Line:
DOCTOR: "These are really good handcuffs."
DONNA: "Well, at least we've got quality."

Favourite Moment: Donna rages at the system.

Lasting Image: the caged Ood.

6/10


Sarah -
Best Line: "If you don't do what she says, you're really in trouble. Not from me, from her."

Favorite Moment:  Donna’s empathy towards the Ood. 

Lasting Image: The Caged Ood.

6/10

Our marathon continues with Story #192: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky...

Story #190 - The Fires of Pompeii (2008)

"But you can't rewrite history! Not one line!" –The First Doctor

"Or can you?" -- Donna Noble


Sarah - 
Ensconced in the TARDIS, Donna is on her first trip to the past in what is meant to be Rome, but turns out to be Pompeii -- the day before volcano day.


Harry -
"Ancient Rome!"
"Oh my God, it's so Roman!"

Donna reacts how the rest of us probably would. Wide-eyed and reveling in the opportunity to see the past and experience an ancient culture, which, as the Doctor points out is the present-day for the locals.

Following his own advice, the Doctor walks around like he owns the place. Donna interacts with people and tries out her Latin.

The "Roman Holiday" is short lived, as our friends spot a great mountain on the outskirts of the city. It's Vesuvius, and it's beginning to emit smoke, and they both realize in horror where and when they are.


Sarah -
Wherever the Doctor thought he was going, the TARDIS had other plans. Donna, being Donna, is ready to lead the evacuation of the town but the Doctor explains that no one would listen, assuming she's a complete nut job. It's also an opportunity for the Doctor to deliver his eternal sermon -- that there are fixed points in time that cannot be changed, no matter how awful they may be. Unsurprisingly, Donna is not on board.


Harry -
Right away Donna asserts her excellence in wanting to protect every single person in Pompeii from what is about to happen. The Doctor's hands-off aloofness angers her, establishing the story-long debate that they will engage in. Up to this point in New Who, we have seen the Doctor's companions generally willing to follow his lead, but Donna's bluntness in challenging him is a fresh change.


Sarah -
This is why I love Donna so much. She’s a grown-ass woman who isn’t going to do what the Doctor tells her without understanding why. Total breath of fresh air.


Harry -
She represents a clean break in the show. Amy and Clara definitely follow the Doctor-companion template established by Donna.


Sarah -
Always the trailblazer, our Donna!

Speaking of Amy, did you recognize the mysterious woman observing the Doctor-Donna argument in the street? Of course you did. It's Karen Gillan, who will become Amy in a couple years! It's also Peter Capaldi's first appearance in Doctor Who, following Colin Baker in appearing in the show before becoming the Doctor. I was already a fan of Peter Capaldi and was so excited to see him on Doctor Who. I imagine Capaldi, a life-long Doctor Who fan, saw this as the pinnacle of his career, with no idea of what was yet to come!


Harry -
In a story filled with seers, auguries and visions of the future, it was sublime to catch glimpses of future Who woven into the fabric of the episode. A month after this story was first broadcast, Steven Moffat was announced as Doctor Who's next showrunner. I can't help but wonder if this story brought Gillan and Capaldi front and centre to Moffat, or if he already had them in mind for his iteration of the greatest show in the galaxy.


Sarah -
I’m sure it was all part of his puzzle-box master plan.


Harry -
In the role of marble merchant Caecilius, Capaldi is among many excellent guest actors. He, Tracey Childs, Francesca Fowler and Francois Pandolfo form an upwardly mobile family with ambitions for their business and for the two teens. Caecilius is also a collector, and he's just scored a piece of "modern art" from the local market. It's the TARDIS, and it soon brings the Doctor and Donna to his door pretending to be marble inspectors. At the same time, the arrogant city augur Lucius arrives to collect a sculpture he commissioned from Caecilius.


Sarah -
They’re a lovely little family, but I’m more than a little creeped out by Evelina’s prophecy abilities. The Whole Sibylline Sisterhood makes me uncomfortable, to be honest. I don’t care for true believers of any stripe, which leads us to Lucius. Phil Davis was the perfect actor for this part; I was uncomfortable every moment he was on screen!


Harry -
The only other thing I remember Phil Davis from is the star-studded 1984 version of The Bounty. Even back then he played a sneering authority figure as one of the ship's officers. So he definitely found his niche early on.


Sarah -
You’re forgetting his excellent performance as Jud on Poldark!


Harry -
And he sneered through most of that too.  

His character Lucius goes above and beyond the true believer. He is aiding and abetting some unseen side. The work he commissioned from Caecilius turns out to be stone carvings of electronic circuitry. Naturally, this grabs the Doctor's attention, and he follows the plot back to Lucius, where an entire array of stone circuitry has been assembled piece by piece. The technology will power an energy converter built by the Pyroviles, an alien race that wants to conquer Earth and destroy humanity. 

The story kicks into gear as the Doctor escapes from Lucius' place to find the Sibylline Sisters, who have kidnapped Donna and plan to execute her for heresy. The heresy was merely Donna attempting to make them understand that Pompeii was in imminent danger.


Sarah -
Heresy, facts; potato, potahto -- it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Donna, of course, does not go quietly!


Harry -
The Doctor saves Donna with the clever use of a water pistol, and we finally get to the killer plot twist. In order to stop the Pyroviles, their energy converter must be destroyed. In doing so, it will trigger an explosion under Mount Vesuvius -- the explosion that destroyed Pompeii.


Sarah -
I always have mixed feelings about these sorts of plot twists -- Adric kills the dinosaurs, the Tenth Doctor feeds lines to Shakespeare, and the Fifth Doctor lets a fire in Pudding Lane become the Great Fire of London. Part of me loves them and the other part rolls my eyes.


Harry -
He's like a Meddling Monk with the best of intentions.  Eventually every fixed point in Earth history will have been caused by the Doctor.  What will he/she/they do then?

Seeing the story through Donna's eyes, it's devastating. All this time the Doctor has rebuffed her pleas to warn the people of Pompeii, and now the stunning realization: the disaster of Pompeii will be caused by the Doctor, and for the good of the entire planet, it has to happen.


Sarah -
It’s a heartbreaking moment when Donna begs him to save one person if he can’t save the city.


Harry -
Even knowing what was coming, this scene is really gut-wrenching.  Donna went from giddy time tourist to tormented witness to history in the space of a few hours.  I did love that she took on a share of the responsibility and she and the Doctor threw the fatal switch together.


Sarah -
The Doctor relents and saves the Caecilius family, taking them to the hills above the city.


Harry -
Despite the overwhelming weight of his actions and the urge to cut and run, he performed one small act of kindness. It's a moment that will reverberate through the Doctor's future timeline.  Having lost so much, from Gallifrey to Rose, in a moment of total chaos he still found it in himself to be kind to total strangers in distress.  Sure, this Doctor will go on to storm the universe wreaking vengeance as the angry god, but this moment will come back and reignite the will to goodness that was almost buried within.  

Donna did this.  She is bloody brilliant.  She saved both the Doctor and the Caecilius family.


Sarah -
Six months later, the family has relocated to Rome, where their new household gods bear a striking resemblance to our TARDIS team. 

"The Fires of Pompeii" is a solid and pacey story. It was fun to rewatch it after many years.


Harry -
Great story, great acting and great design work.  The fire monsters were a bit clunky, but that's a minor complaint.


Sarah -
Best Line: “You must excuse my friend, she's from Barcelona.”

Favorite Moment: Donna asking the Doctor to save just one person. 

Lasting Image: The family home and its modern-art TARDIS

7/10


Harry -
Best Line: the TARDIS team's closing exchange.  Quiet and meaningful.

DONNA: Thank you. 
DOCTOR: Yeah. You were right. Sometimes I need someone. Welcome aboard. 
DONNA: Yeah.

Favourite Moment: the Caecilius family leaping into position every time a tremor rocks their house.

Lasting Image: the survivors observing the destruction of Pompeii.

7/10

Our marathon continues with Story #191: Planet of the Ood...