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Doctor Who: Waters of Mars
A rather bland episode is saved by a handful of WOW moments as the Tennant era winds down.
The story - or rather the events behind the larger motivating idea - were overly familiar. We saw them in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, and again in 42, and nothing here really stood out in terms of the characters or the threat. Lindsay Duncan did a good job as Adelaide Brooke, but there was nothing about her that made me care about her as a person, but only as an idea. And the weird water-spewing body-possessing aliens made no sense and brought little drama.
However, nothing here was really about them, was it? This was all about how the Doctor stumbles into a situation that cannot be fixed, that history requires happen for the greater good, and how he has to deal with it. Let's put aside the fact that DW cosmology has never really worked like that - the Doctor was once sent by Time Lords to prevent the coming of the Daleks, after all. Whoverse history is malleable. And let's put aside how we got a few too many moments of Tennant being all portentous about Not Being Able to Help, and one clumsy inner monologue. I blame the director for that, since by now I don't think Tennant ever hits a wrong note as the doctor.
Let's focus on the dilemma. Let's assume that the rules about fixed points are right. And let's watch the Doctor try to explain to Brooke how she has to die, even as he makes it clear that she is the focal point of an adventure that spans generations. The pain and the necessity of his choice - or his decision not to choose - comes together, and for one scene we forget how bland everything else is. And we also get the Doctor moving to the center of the tale for the first time in the episode. It doesn't last, and as things spiral down and down, he drifts aside and the story drifts.
And then come those last ten minutes. The "Time Lord Victorious" arrives, lonely and lost after losing everyone who matters, sick and tired of all the death, angry at the universe for leaving him to be the last Time Lord, and broken enough to rewrite the rules as he sees fit. It's an amazing and unnerving sequence, played amazingly by Tennant as he saves the day (sort of) and loses himself. And it tells us that one of the defining characteristics of Ten, and perhaps of all versions of the Doctor, is overweening arrogance. It even serves to remind us that as much as we might have sympathized with the Doctor all these years, the Time Lords' rules existed for a reason.
We leave off with the Doctor jolted from his triumphal, even Masterly, bluster by Brooke's final horrified sacrifice, and with the bells of doom tolling. It's a chilling sequence, and I think I can say with some certainty that while a regenerated Master is obviously the threat in the last two Ten hours, the foe the Doctor will be facing is the Doctor.
What's most interesting is that after we watched this, Batya found the last scene in "The Runaway Bride" and showed me Donna's (temporary) farewell to Ten, where she said that he had should not travel alone, because he needed someone to stop him. The seeds for this disconnect were there early on. For all our concern about where RTD has taken the Doctor, he's had a vision for the character all along, and an understanding that Ten (perhaps more than some other Doctors, perhaps not) needs someone to ground him, lest he destroy the ground.
I don't want Tennant to leave. But I have a feeling that perhaps his last two hours will be a grand farewell of the sort we haven't seen since Five's death.
Last unrelated thought: the Mars base was the Bowie One. Clearly a tip of the hat to David Bowie, who wrote the songs "Life on Mars" and "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," and who once played an alien who came to Earth to find water for his dying planet in "The Man Who Fell to Earth." I would never name a Mars base for anyone but Bradbury or Heinlein or Sagan, but at least Bowie is a clever choice.
The story - or rather the events behind the larger motivating idea - were overly familiar. We saw them in The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, and again in 42, and nothing here really stood out in terms of the characters or the threat. Lindsay Duncan did a good job as Adelaide Brooke, but there was nothing about her that made me care about her as a person, but only as an idea. And the weird water-spewing body-possessing aliens made no sense and brought little drama.
However, nothing here was really about them, was it? This was all about how the Doctor stumbles into a situation that cannot be fixed, that history requires happen for the greater good, and how he has to deal with it. Let's put aside the fact that DW cosmology has never really worked like that - the Doctor was once sent by Time Lords to prevent the coming of the Daleks, after all. Whoverse history is malleable. And let's put aside how we got a few too many moments of Tennant being all portentous about Not Being Able to Help, and one clumsy inner monologue. I blame the director for that, since by now I don't think Tennant ever hits a wrong note as the doctor.
Let's focus on the dilemma. Let's assume that the rules about fixed points are right. And let's watch the Doctor try to explain to Brooke how she has to die, even as he makes it clear that she is the focal point of an adventure that spans generations. The pain and the necessity of his choice - or his decision not to choose - comes together, and for one scene we forget how bland everything else is. And we also get the Doctor moving to the center of the tale for the first time in the episode. It doesn't last, and as things spiral down and down, he drifts aside and the story drifts.
And then come those last ten minutes. The "Time Lord Victorious" arrives, lonely and lost after losing everyone who matters, sick and tired of all the death, angry at the universe for leaving him to be the last Time Lord, and broken enough to rewrite the rules as he sees fit. It's an amazing and unnerving sequence, played amazingly by Tennant as he saves the day (sort of) and loses himself. And it tells us that one of the defining characteristics of Ten, and perhaps of all versions of the Doctor, is overweening arrogance. It even serves to remind us that as much as we might have sympathized with the Doctor all these years, the Time Lords' rules existed for a reason.
We leave off with the Doctor jolted from his triumphal, even Masterly, bluster by Brooke's final horrified sacrifice, and with the bells of doom tolling. It's a chilling sequence, and I think I can say with some certainty that while a regenerated Master is obviously the threat in the last two Ten hours, the foe the Doctor will be facing is the Doctor.
What's most interesting is that after we watched this, Batya found the last scene in "The Runaway Bride" and showed me Donna's (temporary) farewell to Ten, where she said that he had should not travel alone, because he needed someone to stop him. The seeds for this disconnect were there early on. For all our concern about where RTD has taken the Doctor, he's had a vision for the character all along, and an understanding that Ten (perhaps more than some other Doctors, perhaps not) needs someone to ground him, lest he destroy the ground.
I don't want Tennant to leave. But I have a feeling that perhaps his last two hours will be a grand farewell of the sort we haven't seen since Five's death.
Last unrelated thought: the Mars base was the Bowie One. Clearly a tip of the hat to David Bowie, who wrote the songs "Life on Mars" and "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," and who once played an alien who came to Earth to find water for his dying planet in "The Man Who Fell to Earth." I would never name a Mars base for anyone but Bradbury or Heinlein or Sagan, but at least Bowie is a clever choice.
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