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The Sarah Jane Adventures: “Death of the Doctor”

Oh, no! Now it's Matt Smith's turn for a crossover. And it's almost as memorable as David Tennant's appearance. Granted, it didn't help that the aliens in this particular episode are so obviously intent on evil deeds that they might as well be wearing sandwich boards advertising that fact. However, the episode managed to work quite well despite all that.

Special kudos go to screenwriter Russell T. Davies who actually managed to make me sympathize with a character that I had often found quite annoying in the past: Jo Grant. Davies obviously has a lot of affection for the Ms. Grant character and it showed. Plus he had a way of making her character relevant to today's Doctor Who viewers that I didn't quite expect and he managed to do it with stealing any thunder from our beloved Sarah Jane.

Indeed, the whole episode worked best as a shout-out to anyone who had ever received any positive influence from any of the various incarnations of Doctor Who and there is a bit towards the end which managed to become must-see viewing for any hardcore DW fan. Plus our beloved Sarah Jane Smith comes out very nicely as well. But then you all probably expected that.

Anyway, I doubt that we'll be seeing any more crossovers on this show for a while. But then after an episode like this, we really shouldn't need another crossover for a long time to come.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The End of Time: Part Two”

Well, as I noted yesterday, the David Tennant era of Doctor Who is officially over and in the next episode, we will see a young actor named Matt Smith -- no relation to the other Smiths in the DW universe, I trust -- taking over the role of the Doctor. Russell T. Davies will be leaving too and Steven Moffat -- writer of some of the better Doctor Who episodes -- will be taking his place.

As a result, I was not quite as annoyed with this episode as I was the episode before it. The hungry cyborg/Master still bothers me -- for that matter, so does the Mighty Morphin' Power Master -- but they are not really deal breakers. Nor did I mind too much the sillier elements: for example, that fall from a great height that theoretically should have killed the Doctor outright but instead just stunned him a little. Or for that matter, the magic radiation that killed people but still left a certain alien free to travel about without worrying about contaminating anyone.

RTD did take time to indulge all his greatest hits: armed confrontations, moving planets, Star Wars references, arbitrary visits to characters of previous episodes, etc. He always had a flair for the epic that he could not always fulfill as well as he should -- though given the fact that he's been working on three shows -- Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures -- it seems amazing that his screenplays work as well as they do.

Anyway, we never do find out Wilf's big secret -- although we do find out at least one secret about him. Nor do we quite learn the true identity of the Woman in White who kept popping up in the previous episode. Yes, she appears to be a Timelady but apart from that, who is she really? Why does the Doctor seem to recognize him. Show writer Julie Gardner has supposedly outed her as the Doctor's mother -- but RTD did not officially concur -- perhaps so that the new guy's writing staff can come up with their own explanations.

RTD has received more than a little criticism about how he first wrote Donna Noble into a situation where she faced certain death and then rescued her at the last second. Granted, her rescue was so unexpected that I kept the Monty Python crew to show up and start singing about how she was saved at the last minute. But I am kinda glad he did not decide to exploit her death for cheap emotional points and even more glad that he gave her a happy ending. Her ending may not make the most feminist fans of Doctor Who very happy -- but they made sense in view of what we already learned about the character in previous episodes and I was glad to see that her new spouse actually seems to care for her.

Perhaps Donna will have children with her new husband and perhaps someday one of them will accompany a future incarnation of the Doctor on his travels through time and space. Of course, that seems unlikely now. But then at one time, a second Doctor Who series seemed unlikely too.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The End of Time: Part One”

Of course, it always seemed obvious to me that if the Master was ever to come down with an eating disorder, it would undoubtedly involve raging hunger -- just like in this episode.

But still... A hungry cyborg? A cyborg who is resurrected through potions?

Granted, series creator Russell T. Davies deserves kudos for resisting the temptation to toss in a visual reference to Meatloaf's “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” (After all, the title seemed reference enough as it was.) But did we also need visual references to Silence of the Lambs, Stargate, The X-Files and seemingly almost every sci-fi movie and TV show that is not Doctor Who?

I suspect that Davies' true love is really fantasy and indeed, if you look at most of his Doctor Who as basically sword-and-sorcery stories set in space -- with Captain Jack being Fahred to the Doctor's Grey Mouser and the Doctor's various female companions playing Maid Marion to his Robin Hood -- then the stories do not seem so weird. One of these days, Davies is going to settle down and start working on a fantasy series that is either similar to his beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer or else similar to Wizards and Warriors. However, at this point, I am still not sure whether or not that would be a good thing.

Anyway, I did like certain scenes in this episode -- including a brief glimpse of my beloved Donna Noble and quite longer glimpses of Donna's grandfather. Indeed, one of the best scenes of the episode -- if not, the whole series -- is a brief conversation in a cafe between the Doctor and Donna's grandfather.

I am not sure how I feel about the episode's end. After all, that pun was pretty bad. But I will give it credit for boasting the most memorable cliffhanger since “Utopia.”

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Waters of Mars”

Anyone else ever wonder if writer Russell T. Davies really likes the character of Doctor Who as much as he claims to? Granted, he deserves much praise for resurrecting the series from near-certain death and making it popular again. But still the way he depicts the Doctor does make me wonder.

For example, in the latest episode, the Doctor is given several opportunities to flee a situation that seems certain to end in tragedy for all concerned. But it's been established that he is too much of a mensch to do that with a clear conscience.

And yet when he accomplishes the impossible and rescues several members of an Earth expedition to Mars from certain death, he is given a rather contrived “mad” scene in which he takes pride in having defied the laws of Time. A scene which scares a mortal human being so much that she seemingly commits suicide just to defy him.

Which begs the question: what kind of point is Davies trying to make with this episode? That the Doctor shouldn't go around trying to rescue anybody because he might scare people? That people are better off going off to their deaths than being rescued by a guy with emotional issues?

Given that Davies devoted a whole episode to the consequences of the Doctor attempting to change history, I also found it odd that this episode seems to make it seem like nothing in that episode ever really happened. Perhaps it's only when Doctor Who crosses his own time line that he gets into trouble. Or perhaps the whole thing is the fault of Davies' co-writer Phil Ford.

Oh, well. I enjoyed the episode more than I expected, considering it was basically little more than a thinly veiled rewrite of Alien combined with the “mad” scene from King Lear. Lindsay Duncan, the woman who played the commander of the Earth expedition, gave a good performance and I especially liked the way the writers tried to humanize the supporting characters. I could have done without the “funny” robot that seemed to be an obvious parody of the title character of WALL·E but even that device had its moments.

If we must have endless Alien remakes, I'd rather see them done Doctor Who style than in any other way. But most of all, I'd rather see an original story for a change. Hopefully I'll get my wish in the near future.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Planet of the Dead”

Geez, all this time since the last episode (which aired around Christmastime) and now we gotta wait until November until the next episode. It's a good time there's so much classic Who on DVD because, otherwise, the wait would be unbearable.

As for the episode itself...

Well, I enjoyed it but I saw no real reason why it had to be filmed in Dubai. (Other countries do have sand, you know.)

Michelle Ryan was okay as the female lead character, Lady Christina de Souza -- though I'm a bit stumped as to why the first character on new Who to bear a Spanish name thus far got to be a streetwalker -- and quite possibly a nanny as well -- while the first character to bear a Portuguese surname -- Ms. de Souza, natch -- gets to be an aristocrat. True, she's a crooked aristocrat, but still... Way to counter those obnoxious ethnic stereotypes, Russell T. Davies. Fight the power.

Anyway, apart from that, the story was not all that bad though I could have done without a character who looked suspiciously like Donna Noble's grandfather and another who looked suspiciously like Jackie Tyler and yet another who looked suspiciously like Mickey Smith and so on and so forth. Yes, we get it. Mr. Davies. You love these characters. I love these characters too. But I'd love them a lot more if you gave them a rest every once in a while.

And if you're going to introduce flylike aliens just so you can make a joke about excrement -- well, you're not writing a screenplay for The Dark Light-Years so I'd just prefer it if you didn't go there.

On the other hand, the Quatermass reference was way cool. So kudos for that.

I'm not sure why UNIT -- and not Torchwood -- showed up to help out -- but at least you didn't depict the good folks of UNIT as imbeciles... So good on you again, Mr. Davies.

It's still going to be a long, long wait until November, though.