Who Reviews The Doctor's Daughter by SF Cambridge

 

Starring David Tennant as The Doctor, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. 
Georgia Moffett as Jenny & Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones.

 

The Doctor: “Why did the TARDIS bring us here?”

Martha: “Oh, I love this bit.”

Donna: “I thought you wanted to go home.”

Martha: “I know. But, all the same. It’s that feeling you get.”

Donna: “Like you swallowed a hamster” 

After reuniting with Martha, The Doctor and Donna take an unexpected trip to a planet called Messaline, arriving right in the middle of a war between humans and an alien species of fish men known as the Hath. They land totally unprepared for what awaits them outside the TARDIS doors and even though Martha initially complained when the TARDIS took flight that she didn’t want to travel with The Doctor anymore, she was as excited as ever when they landed knowing that an adventure waited for her. 

They are met by armed men who order them to drop their weapons and they raise their hands to show they are unarmed. A man obviously in charge, an older looking general called Cline, orders the other two soldiers to force The Doctor’s hand at gunpoint into a machine nearby; The Doctor is confused, until he realises as he yelps in pain, that the machine is taking a sample of his tissue which is then transferred into a cabinet next to him, reproducing his biology to form another being, one he later finds out will become a soldier to be used to help fight the already raging war. As the door to the cabinet opens, a girl steps out and is handed a gun by Cline and she already knows how to use it. 

The Doctor: “Something tells me this isn’t about to check my blood pressure”

Martha: “Where did she come from?”

The Doctor: “From me”.

Donna: “From you? How? Who is she?”

The Doctor: “Well she’s… well. She’s my daughter”

The girl: “Hello Dad”

The Hath suddenly appear and gun shots are heard as there is an explosion which causes a blockage between The Doctor, Donna and the girl and Martha who is thrown clear but is knocked out. The others learn they have to go the long way round the battle zone to find her assuming the soldiers are right about the Hath and that they are the enemy and now think Martha is in danger, but in the meantime as she comes to, she manages to communicate with the Hath and helps one of their injured soldiers with a dislocated shoulder. The Hath then helps her to find The Doctor, taking her on a route outside the camp onto the planet surface itself where he sacrifices himself to save her in a distressing scene that leaves Martha distraught. 

Throughout the episode, we learn that all the soldiers who were created with the extrapolated flesh from a host, have a built-in memory of the war and are born ready to fight, just as the girl was who Donna has decided to call Jenny after The Doctor referred to her as a generated anomaly. It seems that not only do they all know how to fight, but that the war between them must be won and that the planet they are on is dying because they have been fighting for so long. 

The humans base camp is inside an old theatre and very reminiscent of the war on Earth in the 1940’s. 

As they go on their search for the truth and for Martha, Donna discovers that the war which has supposedly been raging for generations, is really only a week old and the soldiers have been confused when their ship crashed in their search for “The source” which they assume is a weapon they can use to finally destroy the Hath with. The Doctor concludes that although Cline is their leader, he is warped in his mind and has become very hostile. His reason for existing is to fight, something he installs into the soldiers he creates. The Doctor knows he is dangerous, and forms a plan to find the source before he does. 

Jenny: “What do you mean seven days?”

The Doctor: “Seven days since war broke out.”

Donna: “This war started seven days ago. Just a week.”

Jenny: “A week? They said years”

Donna: “No, they said generations”.

The Doctor: “They’ve mythologized their entire history” 

Initially The Doctor was hostile towards Jenny as he continues to struggle with his past and the loss of his people. They argue about wars and fighting when she insists that he acts like a General himself as he makes plans and form strategies and carries a weapon in the form of his sonic screwdriver but when Donna reveals that Jenny has two hearts just like him and that she could in fact be a Time Lord, he begins to warm to her and even agrees to take her with him to travel with him and Donna. If she is at least part Time Lord, then he knows he has to take care of her and it gives him some comfort knowing that he’ll no longer be the last of his kind. 

Martha finally catches up with them all after a struggle to survive outside on the planet’s harsh atmosphere and after escaping from the ongoing pursuit of the soldiers, they finally discover exactly what the source is, a terraforming agent that was supposed to revive the dying planet and create a better world that the humans and Hath could live in together. 

The Doctor tries to reason with the soldiers and the Hath and tells them they have their whole history wrong, he gives them an explanation of how they can create a better way to live together but Cline who refuses to believe anything The Doctor says, tries to shoot him but Jenny gets in the way and is shot instead and the grieving Doctor leaves the planet thinking she has died……Too many spoilers if you haven’t seen this episode so I’ll leave it there. 

The Doctor: “Jenny, be strong now. You need to hold on, you hear me? We’ve got things to do, you and me. Hey! Hey! We can go anywhere, everywhere. You choose.”

Jenny: “That sounds good.”

The Doctor: “You’re my daughter, and we’ve only just got started. You’re going to be great. You’re going to be more than great. You’re going to be amazing.” 

It has been noted by many Whovians that The Doctor’s daughter is played by the 5th Doctor’s daughter, Georgia Moffett who later went on to marry David Tennant. 

The Doctor: “Jenny was the reason for the TARDIS bringing us here. It just got here too soon. We then created Jenny in the first place. Paradox. An endless paradox”

 

Who Reviews The Unicorn and the Wasp by SF Cambridge

 

Starring David Tennant as The Doctor & Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. 

Agatha: “I found my husband with another woman. A younger, prettier woman. Isn’t it always the way?”

Donna: “Well, mine was with a giant spider but same difference.” 

Agatha Christie…. What about her? 

The Doctor and Donna land the TARDIS in 1926 in the grounds of a stately home belonging to Lady Clemency Eddison and her husband Colonel Hugh Curbishley, and promptly invite themselves to her dinner party as guests of hers. They are thrilled to find one of the special guests invited is none other than the famous novelist, Agatha Christie! Very happy and excited to be in the presence of such an influential character the Doctor soon realizes that they have arrived on the very day that she will inexplicably disappear for ten days which is perhaps one of her greatest mysteries and one The Doctor himself might get close to solving. 

Lady Eddison tells The Doctor of a notorious jewel thief named The Unicorn and whilst all the guests are mingling and other guests have arrived, Reverend Golightly from the village, a Professor who hasn’t made an appearance yet although he is seen at the beginning of the episode making his way to the library, Lady Robina Redmond, a socialite from London and the son of Lady Eddison and her husband, Roger, all of a sudden Lady Eddison’s maid comes running out the house screaming “MURDER!” and announces that Professor Peach is dead in the library. 

The Doctor and Donna are the first on the scene and after finding morphic residue left behind by the killer, he concludes that the murderer is an alien in human form and announces to the guests that he and Donna are from Scotland Yard, and orders all the guests to be interviewed by himself and Mrs. Christie. Donna is sent to search all the rooms for evidence and comes across a locked room that has previously been empty for 40 years. She orders it to be unlocked by the butler and within minutes hears and then sees a gigantic wasp outside. It smashes through the window and attacks Donna, embedding its sting in the door before escaping. 

The wasp then kills Lady Eddison’s maid, Miss Chandrakala. The Doctor, Donna, and Agatha chase the alien but it returns to human form before they catch it. the Doctor identifies the substance from the sting as venom from an alien wasp called a Vespiform and all the guests are interviewed and have alibis as to where they were when Professor Peach was murdered. Donna remarks on his murder being something out of Agatha’s books and plans start to hatch in The Doctor’s head, but before he can conclude anything, whilst he is in the study with Agatha and Donna, he is given a drink by the butler and poisoned with cyanide. After a hilarious detox in the kitchen in which he uses several food and drinks to force the poison out of his system followed by some of Donn’s best lines in the whole of series 4, he then devises a plan. 

Donna: “The murderer’s an alien.”

The Doctor: “Which means one of that lot is an alien in human form.”

Donna: “Yeah, but think about it. There’s a murder, a mystery and Agatha Christie.”

The Doctor: “So? Happens to me all the time.”

Donna: “No. But isn’t that a bit weird? Agatha Christie didn’t walk around surrounded by murders. Not really. I mean that’s like meeting Charles Dickens and he’s surrounded by ghosts. At Christmas.” 

The Doctor tries to identify the killer at dinner later that evening believing him to be hiding among the guests still, but after a blackout and a storm, Lady Eddison's “Fire stone” necklace is stolen, and her son, Roger, is murdered when he is stabbed in the back with a knife. 

The remaining guests are assembled in the sitting room. Agatha exposes one of the guests, Lady Robina Redmond, as the Unicorn who stole the Fire Stone, but not as the murderer. Then the Doctor deduces that Lady Eddison's shutting herself away for months in the locked room Donna found, years ago was due to her becoming pregnant at a young age and wanting to hide her shame from her family. She then tells the story of the baby’s father who is another Vespiform who had given her the necklace before he died in 1885; unbeknownst to her, it links her telepathically with their child. The Doctor further reveals that the child, whom she gave up for adoption, is Reverend Golightly. Via the telepathic link, the Reverend became aware of his alien nature and absorbed the details of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”, an Agatha Christie murder mystery his mother was reading at the time which led him to kill Professor Peach in the way he did just after he found out the truth about the adoption. 

The Reverend transforms into the Vespiform and threatens the guests. Agatha grabs the necklace and lures him away while driving towards the nearby Silent Pool. When Donna catches up with Agatha, she grabs the necklace and throws it into the water, prompting the wasp to dive in after it and drown. Due to her own connection with the necklace, Agatha falls unconscious and suffers from amnesia, The Doctor quietly drops Agatha off near the Harrogate Hotel ten days later, thus solving the mystery of Agatha Christie.

He then shows Donna a copy of “Death in the Clouds” a book written by Agatha years later, in which wasps play a vital part, stating that maybe she did remember something, after all. 

The Doctor: “She is the bestselling novelist of all time”.

Donna: “But she never knew.”

The Doctor: “Well no one knows how they’re going to be remembered. All we can do is hope for the best. Maybe that’s what kept her writing. Same thing that keeps me travelling. Onwards?”

Donna: “Onwards” 

This is by far my favourite Doctor Who episode of all time. David Tennant and Catherine Tate working together at their very best, with some great plot twists and hilarious one liners. It reminds us that no matter what, no matter where and no matter who, the murderer is always an alien!

 

Who Reviews Code of the Krillitanes by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

You know when I said, I’d be hard pressed to find a story of Justin’s that I didn’t like – well I might have just found it. Although, the story itself is brilliant, but the way the story is told is perhaps what grates on me. Yes, yes, I know, Doctor Who is a family show, directed towards children just big enough to see over the dinner table. Well actually, it’s not, it’s for the Mums and Dads, the brothers and sisters, the grannies and grandads, and all those in between. Everyone loves a bit of Doctor Who, and at no point during the series do you ever feel you’re being talked down to – unless you look at the writings of the 12^th Doctor and some of the 11^th, but definitely none of the 10^th, or so I thought.

Code of the Krillitane is a short sharp shot of an adventure, and by short, it’s less than half the size of a standard novel, and the writing is large, so that in itself geared my feelings towards the ‘I’m reading a kid’s book and I’m not sure I’m happy about that.’

When you get passed that however, the story stands quite literally as a normal Doctor Who story, although I did miss Anthony Head and K-9 and perhaps Sarah Jane Smith. But the premise of the Krillitanes hadn’t really changed from how they were back in 2006 at Defry Vale high school.

In this story however, they’re taking control of the minds of everyone, not just school kids, but the entire internet. Everyone was gaining a brain, and could fathom out puzzles and problems as if they were filling in the easy peasy small crossword in The Telegraph. It’s still about the oil. It’s still about taking over a new body, but there’s much more happening at Brainy Crisps factory, and that’s where I’ve reached so far in the story.

I like the idea of the story, I just wish I wasn’t being treated as if I were a child. I mean, OK, I’m a big kid at heart – but I don’t want to feel as if I’m being talked down to.

So, if that weren’t the issue in the novel, I think I’d find a lot better things to say about Code of the Krillitanes by Justin Richards.

Who Reviews The Infinite Quest by Jeffrey Zyra

Written By Alan Barnes

Directed by Gary Russell

Broadcast 2 Apr – 29 Jun 2007

The Doctor and Martha are tricked into finding the four data chips that hold the secret to the ship The Infinite.  The robotic bird Caw gives The Doctor and Martha the first chip and also tells them that Baltazar has escaped from prison and is hunting for them also.   As the TARDIS dematerializes it is revealed that Baltazar was standing behind it listening to the whole thing and asks Caw if the homing signal is operational.  He said he it is and it is in the pin he gave Martha.

The quest sends The Doctor and Martha to the planet Boukon where oil barons are sucking up the last of the oil and pirates are stealing it and selling it for their own gain.  Then they head to the planet Myarr where the humans and the insect race are at war against each other and finally to the planet of Volag – Noc which is one of the coldest planets in the universe and home to one of the biggest prisons. 

Baltazar confronts them on the planet Volag – Noc and forces The Doctor to cooperate by finding out where the Infinite is by using the TARDIS. After The Doctor puts the coordinates in Baltazar knocks The Doctor out and leaves him on Volag – Noc.  The Doctor now must save Martha and prevent Baltazar from getting his heart’s desire and using the Infinite to take over the Universe.

The Infinite Quest is actually a pretty decent story but more to the point it is more geared to children than adults.  It is a fun story to watch with a simple story of The Doctor on the quest for the data chips and then stopping the villain Baltazar voiced by Anthony Head of Buffy fame.  It was originally broadcast as part of the children’s Doctor Who program Totally Doctor Who which aired in 2007.  You had to watch every week to catch the 3 minute shorts which was released on DVD as one eighty minute movie. 

The animation is pretty simple also and does not break the barriers for animation but it does not really put a damper on the story at all.  Well for the most part anyway as David Tennant seems to have the same expression and well there is just something wrong with the eye brows that just gets to be distracting at times.  But compared to the animation of Dreamland that comes a few years later it is just simpler and looks more like a cartoon.

The thing about The Infinite Quest is that it could easily fit in Series 3 but most people don’t consider it a part of series 3 but hey it has Martha in it so to me it is part of Series 3.  I liked the simplicity of the Infinite Quest and did like the way the different alien planets looked and how they were able to do more with them in cartoon form than on a set.  One of the advantages of doing a story in animation is being able to do what you want without any restrictions from studios and stuff being expensive.

The Infinite Quest is a fun romp with some pretty good moments even if the animation is wooden at times.   So if you have kids and want to watch a fun story to get them interested in the show or science fiction in general then The Infinite Quest would be a good one to watch.

Grade B +

©BBC Doctor Who 1963

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Who Reviews Forever Autumn by Simon Mallinson

Written by Mark Morris

Published by BBC Books

ISBN 978-1-8460-7270-3

It is almost Halloween in the sleepy New England town of Blackwood Falls. Leaves litter lawns and sidewalks, paper skeletons hang in the windows, and carved pumpkins leer from front porches.

The Doctor and Martha soon discover that something long-dormant has awoken, and this will be no ordinary Halloween. What is the secret of the ancient tree and the book discovered tangled in its roots? What rises from the churchyard at night, sealing the lips of the only witness? Why are the harmless trappings of Halloween suddenly taking on a creepy new life of their own?

As nightmarish creatures prowl the streets, the Doctor and Martha must battle to prevent both the townspeople and themselves from suffering a grisly fate. . .

Featuring the Doctor and Martha as played by David Tennant and Freema Agyeman in the hit series from BBC Television.

I have put the synopsis from the actual book, as the person who wrote it has done a great job of concise description.  From the start of this book which is always best read on a dark and moody autumn night, you will find yourself transported into this small New England Town.

Quickly the story sucks you in, and you find yourself screaming err please don't do that or that is going to hurt.  I have never really found myself so engrossed in a book until now.  Mark's portrayal of The Doctor and Martha is spookily accurate and visions of the TV series flashes between your eyes and you start hearing the voices.

The story doesn't skip on that horror vibe as well, which is very refreshing and you find yourself looking over your shoulder and hearing creaks and footsteps in the house.

I would advise everyone to read this story and jump and squeal with delight.  Thank you Mark in this book you have done wonders and it deserves to be read.

The Mothership The Dalek Debate

I thought I'd gauge some public responses over the times when the Daleks have 'killed' or attempted to kill our favourite Time Agents and Time Lords and thought I'd ask:

What were your thoughts when Captain Jack Harkness was zapped by the Dalek in "The Parting of the Ways" (before he was brought back) because to me I'd never heard of John Barrowman before this time.  So to me he was another character who would invariably be bumped off somewhere along the line, so it didn't faze me as much as perhaps say losing Rose Tyler or the Doctor.

So the next question is how you felt when the 10th Doctor was zapped by a Dalek and supposedly killed, given that he was beginning to regenerate. Did you suddenly think, shit, they kept that quiet!!!

These are the views of those who posted on our Facebook page but obviously we’d like to hear your views to both these questions, so let’s keep this thread going.

Christopher Fain I felt heartache for Jack, even though I didn't know who he would become, in the future, because I saw the hero he'd become while with the Doctor and Rose. I saw his truly selfless bravery and cheered him on. He was everything the 9th Doctor needed in a male companion---tough enough for the horrors and yet intelligent and romantic. He was, in that moment, everything that a Dalek is not. My real pain with Jack's death in that episode comes from how the Doctor treated it. It took me a while to accept the reasons why the Doctor would panic and leave Jack behind. Until I did accept, I saw it as a terrible betrayal.

Jess Emma Towey Jack, for me was the new companion I hoped we'd see more of. He was new and fresh and had all the traits of a decent character, he was popular with fans of all ages and at that moment when he got hit by the Dalek my heart stopped I thought how could they present us with this perfect companion and then end his reign before we really got to know him.

When the doctor was zapped I was shocked I thought Tennant was making a sudden exit we hadn't heard about, then having to wait a week to find out what was going on they really had us hanging on for conclusion. I’m glad it was a Dalek as they are oldest and most feared of the Time Lords enemies iconic and still scaring the life out kids as they did when I was younger, if he'd died at the hands of a Cyberman I would've been very disappointed.

Just glad in the end both stories had a happy ending