Saving Fish from Drowning
Doctor Who: The Doctor's Daughter
You know, I'm rather convinced that the writing team is deliberately sabotaging the return of Martha in an effort to make us appreciate, by comparison, the dubiously welcome returns of Donna and Rose. Of course, in the case of the former, they needn't have bothered, because even most former TateHaters have to admit that Donna's return benefits both her character and the show. Whether Rose is served as well remains to be seen, but Martha's return is certainly not what it could be. The fact that RTD never pulled Stephen Greenhorn aside and said, "You know, Steve, you might not want to go the whole Martha kidnapping route, because Jackie Raynor's writing that same godawful Damsel in Distress cliche into her two-parter that's running just before yours," seems to suggest a conspiracy against Martha. But at least she had more to do than she did in the previous story and she got a chance to act like the Doctor himself: running around, being tolerant, finding a companion, emoting furiously when he dies, never mentioning him again. Not the Martha return I wanted at all, but it was good to give her at least a minor subplot to deal with.
But dammit, Tate, what’s wrong with you? Can’t you throw me a bone once in a while? Give me something to complain about? Why can’t you be anything less than lovely?
The role was clearly written for Summer Glau but Georgia Moffet fills it quite nicely.
And speaking of lovely… oh, what’s the point? I’ve been beaten to the punch several times anyway. Georgia Moffet was fantastic. The very reason to enjoy this episode was watching Jenny sparkle with talent, attractiveness, and preternatural physical ability. In short, the role was clearly written for Summer Glau but Georgia Moffet fills it quite nicely. It’s kind of a shame she didn’t get the companion role she auditioned for in 2005, but here in this episode is one-upmanship at its finest. Think back to Rose. “I got the bronze,” brags Rose, recalling her gymnastics career as her one redeeming quality. But I’d like to see her try to somersault through a cliché web of laser beams. And I’ll forgive Jenny for using the cliché guard distraction technique, partially because she hasn’t been alive for long enough to learn how hackneyed it is and partially for the obvious reasons expounded upon above.
Enough about the leading ladies, though. It’s clear where my affections lie. And as much as I loved, and am going to marry, the titular fictional character, the episode on the whole can’t be judged on the basis of a single gorgeous, charismatic guest star. Fortunately, there’s quite a bit more to this episode than that. The week-long-war is actually quite a clever idea, and it is slowly exposed in an effective way. The episode gives ample opportunity for Tennant to exercise his emotional range in a way we’ve not seen so far this season, rather than strutting around in a bored fashion as he did in the previous two-part story. And the Hath, despite not doing much other than gurgling a bit, are an interesting alien design.
But was it good enough to live up to the enormous promise it made? This episode's title implicitly promised some serious development of the canon, particularly in the area of demystifying the Doctor's family life. I don’t think I ever seriously expected that we were going to find out about Susan’s mother or delve that deeply into the Doctor’s past—now just doesn’t seem the time, particularly not in a season that seems to be leading to the return of a figure from his more recent past. And so I went into this episode hoping that, even though I knew this episode was going to break all of the promises it made to me, perhaps it could at least take me for a fun ride.
At that, it succeeded. The Doctor’s Daughter works at least on a level of sex appeal (let’s face it, almost every scene includes either Georgia or Freema or sometimes both), and even at a level beyond that in that there’s a somewhat interesting storyline going on and also quite a lot of well-written dialogue. Regardless, I can’t give the episode the enormous level of praise owed to Greenhorn’s previous effort, The Lazarus Experiment. While that episode oozed class and classicality, this one goes for gritty and ultimately fails because gritty has been done so much better in other episodes before—not Greenhorn’s fault, obviously, but I suppose some of the pacing issues are his fault. You’d think that an episode about characters with such short life spans would move at a more consistent pace, rather than moving along quickly then taking little breaks along the way. The rising and falling action was something Greenhorn pulled off well in The Lazarus Experiment, but those brief lulls were written logically into the action and not just sort of shoehorned in like the Jackie/Pete reunion scene in Doomsday.
But it’s hard to fault the slower moments anyway because, like that scene in Doomsday, they’re just so enjoyable. After the promise of the title is broken within the first three minutes, we do get to see the forbidden topic of the Doctor’s pre-Time-War family discussed a little bit. The Doctor’s inability to connect with Jenny initially makes for some wonderful interaction between the Doctor, Jenny, and Donna. Martha’s presence here would likely have ruined these moments because of her existing knowledge. Having witnessed the Doctor cradling the dying Master in his arms, Martha has a deeper understanding of what makes the Doctor tick and so her input into these conversations would likely have served only to foil the emotional experience of the Doctor coming to terms with Jenny. So it’s a good thing that Martha’s off doing her own thing and exercising some emotional range of her own. And, you know, watching a fish drown. And that’s been mercilessly mocked already, so going on about that would be almost as pointless about spending another paragraph talking about how attractive Georgia Moffet is (guess what? She’s awfully pretty). I'm sorry if the title of this review led you to expect an extended rant on the drowning Hath. It was really just meant as a passing reference to the Amy Tan novel by that title. But I digress. My point is that one of the joys of this episode was watching the Doctor slowly come to accept Jenny.
And the moment we learned he was going to let her on board the TARDIS, she had the same target on her forehead that Astrid had in Voyage of the Damned. It was only a matter of how it would happen, and taking a bullet was probably not the way she deserved to go. But, of course she lived. Her survival was a lame cliché, not to mention questionably logical. I suppose we can chalk it up to the terraforming device as well as the fact that she was still within the first fifteen hours of her regenerative cycle. I’m willing to accept it, because if Jenny had simply died then this episode would have utterly failed to have any lasting effect on the canon. Instead, we have the Doctor’s own daughter let loose upon the Whoniverse, which is probably the single greatest innovation to Doctor Who canon since the Doctor became the Last of the Time Lords™. How can I not approve of this episode when it practically guarantees more of Jenny?
There was something a tad disturbing about just how much I enjoyed a certain aspect of the episode. Well, two aspects. Well, two aspects, some fluttering eyelashes and an arse. But her being the daughter of a previous Time Lord actor felt so wrong. It was as if I needed to get her dad's permission before I was able to watch. Difficult to explain, perhaps it's just me, but it was like watching returning soap opera child stars who've grown up. Like Nigel's daughter, Clare. And then if that wasn't bad enough, she starts flirting with Ian Beale... But I'm drifting. If you start thinking about things too hard they begin to fall apart in your hands. Like this story and, as Nebulous might say, like Octember squid on Boxing Day.
These progenation machines for starters. Surely they're like photocopiers? After however many years in transit perhaps what passed for recreation on board the colonists' ship was either The Sound of Music for the 300th time or to fool around on the office equipment and replicate bits of your anatomy. The futuristic equivalent of photocopying your arse. But after planet fall, and after thousands of generations produced, you'd surely be copying a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a.... What you'd start getting out of these machines would be grey mushy people-shaped stains capable of nothing more taxing than conversing with a foetus or worse (if you fed back in some of those grainy arse-scans).
Why do they feel compelled to involve the character when she's given virtually nothing to do. Why do I feel it's a bit like they don't want to admit that they got something wrong and just move on? It's like a dog returning to a lump of old sick it did under the sideboard. Nothing productive is gained, it just can't help itself. I actually enjoy the aspect of modern day television dramas, the way familiar characters come and go, but for godsake give her something to do, instead of just watching a fish drown. 
Let's get this out of
the way first. Yes Georgia Moffett is pretty. In fact not just
pretty but, as Clive James once said of someone else, so pretty that
she makes you want to burst out cheering. And it's hard to
separate her good looks from the sheer verve of a performance that
even managed to match Tennant's level of energy. She was great,
but I'm just thankful the production team cast the part so well,
because she was the saving grace of a story that was certainly not
pretty. Unless pretty terrible counts. It's doubtless a good
thing that we're getting to see another alien planet (two in four
episodes!), and this story was undeniably reminiscent of old-school
Who. Sadly the old school in question was Bob Baker and Dave
Martin's Underworld. "The source is the source" kept
running through my brain, especially when General Cobb/Farmer
Barleymow's rich West Country tones made the Bristol Boys' influence
seem even stronger. In my book, Underworld is still Underworld,
no matter how you package it. As the final credits zapped by, I
felt that I'd watched an experimental attempt to make an episode of
Doctor Who which really did entirely consist of people running around
corridors shouting expository dialogue at each other.
Take the creation of Jenny. Now I've
heard some people say that the pre-credits sequence was deliberately
bathetic – a way of cocking a snook at the frenzy of fan
speculation concerning her origins. This seems unlikely to me,
but as I'd rather play nude hunt-the-thimble with Ian Levine in a vat
of jelly than watch Doctor Who Confidential I guess it'll be a while
until I discover how the story was commissioned. Did Davies simply say to
Greenhorn that he wanted an adventure where the Doctor discovered he
had a daughter? Or did Greenhorn already have a burning ambition to
write a story about a seven day war and soldiers born as adults, and
saw a great opportunity to have the Doctor sire a soldier. I suspect
the former, but aside from all the logical inconsistencies of the
plot, the resulting story lacked any real drama. Jenny had only been
conjured up for a matter of seconds before we were supposed to care
about her and also believe that the Doctor would really go through the
pangs of parenthood. As it is, it wasn't hard for the viewer to care about
Jenny because the character was excellently cast and, to put it
bluntly, she was “well-fit” as I believe today's youth
would say. But that had nothing to do with the story itself which
was framed in such a “let's run down another corridor while venting
an info-dump” way that it did it's very best to make you
totally indifferent to the characters.
While all this was going on
poor old Martha had been given the new series equivalent of the delta
wave augmenter and was sent to fishy Coventry. After her Torchwood
appearances, Freema probably thought that things couldn't get any
worse. Until she found herself separated from the main cast while being
fondled by the least convincing monsters since Ricky Gervais's slug in
Extras. The whole thing got even madder when Martha effectively
bullied the friendly fish to death by forcing him out into a hostile
environment where he rapidly (and mysteriously) drowned. She was upset
for about five seconds, but seemed happy enough when she bumped into
the Doctor. Maybe close proximity to the fishes temporarily gives you
the same memory span? It certainly affected the Doctor. After all his
crying, snarling and shouting about the death of his daughter, he
pissed off without waiting for the funeral. I can remember when the
Doctor used to hang around for a funeral even when they were burying botanists that
he hardly knew. Clearly the Time War has changed him. Did you know
about the Time War by the way? Apparently the Doctor was involved.
All that aside, I do get the
feeling that there are things going on in each episode which will come
to fruition later in the series, and on a much more subtle level than
the Torchwood and Saxon memes. There seems to be a thematic
consistency across this series even if some of the individual episodes
themselves are a bit ropey. It's clear that Jenny will return, but I'm
sure it will be much more significant than a simple reunion, and it's
hard to believe there won't be some payback for all the references to
the Doctor's interference with time and the mysterious vanishing of
planets. The Doctor's Daughter also had something weird going on in
the background which I was alerted to when reading some forum or other. At
around 10' 47" Jenny can clearly be seen standing in front of something
with a UNIT badge on it. If this is something to do with an
unravelling universe, or the consequence of the Doctor's meddling then
fair play. It's hardly in your face. On the other hand if the
production team can manage to include a drowning fish, then it's not
beyond the realms of possibility that they simply used the wrong bit of
set. Stay tuned!
Look, I’m going to put lay my cards on the table early. To me, Stephen Greenhorn is above criticism. Yes, he did create River City - a regional soap so insipid it makes Take The High Road look like the grittiest of Taggart episodes. But he also wrote Sunshine on Leith, a musical based on the music of the Proclaimers. Which, obviously, as a Scot, puts him on a pedestal alongside Sir Sean Connery, Glen Michael and Rab and Ryan from Consolevania.
I’ve deliberately held off on Jenny until now, because when I started this review I wasn’t quite sure what to write. Clearly, judging by the climax, we’re going to see much more of her in the future - much to the delight of the salivating fanboys lusting after her, I’d suspect. And Georgia Moffett brought a lot to the role, not least - in a certain light - an uncanny resemblance to her old man. Thankfully she’s got his accent and not Sandra’s. 
Like any good sci-fi spod, there’s a part of me that despairs at the nation’s obsession with soap operas (well, soap operas that aren’t Coronation Street, anyway). With the boundless potential of the human imagination at our disposal, my inner dork argues, why limit our interest to the same tatty carousel of adultery, family feuds and teenage pregnancies?
And he wasn’t alone. I mean, what was with that flatpack world in a fishbowl nonsense? Why did it start building the new planet to resemble a disused Welsh paper mill? And what, since we’re all here, was the point of the Hath, exactly, other than to remove poor Freema Agyeman from the main action again? (After Torchwood, 
Visually, this had all the hallmarks of being a budget episode designed to save a bit of cash for the end-of-season all-star blow-out. It started impressively enough with a huge FX sequence – CGI, explosions and some kick-ass stunt work – but it turned out this was just a trailer for The Antiques Roadshow, of all things, and, after that, things were considerably more restrained, to the point where Jenny Who’s victorious flight to freedom was reduced to little more than a firefly speck of moving light.
I've seen some trite episodes of Doctor Who in my time but nothing comes close to the cheap, facile, inconsequential mess that is The Doctor's Daughter.
Lots of people have been wittering on about how great David Tennant is in this episode. Why? Because for once in his life he decided to underplay a scene? Big deal! And how many more times must we be reminded that he feels bad about what happened in the Time War? It's gone beyond a joke now. I actually believe that the Doctor is carrying a Bose sound system around in his transcendental pockets so he can play some sad Murray music should the opportunity ever arise where he can wax lyrical about how fucking terrible the whole thing was. But don't worry, Tennant throws away the shackles of subtlety when he stands there pointing a gun at Cobb's head - you can practically see steam coming out of his nostrils. Look at him! He's so angry his jaw is threatening to detach itself! Just shoot yourself instead, you hypocritical, two-faced git.
At first I thought the "clones" only lived for a couple of hours before dropping dead - which would have made dramatic sense. This way Jenny would have been doomed to her fate rather than succumbing to a stupid bloke from Cornwall. And the Doctor could have shown her another world before she croaked it, and that would have been far more moving than the perfunctory bollocks we got.
Mischief, I tell you, mischief. The Doctor’s Daughter is nothing more than an exercise in audience manipulation. Since the title of the episode was announced many of us have been getting our knickers in a twist over the how, why and wherefore of said relative's relationship to the Doctor. Extravagant theories about her being Susan’s mother through to aliens extracting DNA from the bubbling hand have littered cyberspace over the last few weeks. Much hand-wringing later, about whether this really would be the canon buster it threatened to be, and writer Greenhorn cheekily, but timidly, avoids this can of worms even before the titles start to roll. 
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