Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

The Sontaran Experience

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

The shadow of The Two Doctors is all over this one, but in a good way.  Sontarans, Quislings, impugning the honour of Sontaran Generals and Group Marshalls, a think tank of geniuses holed up in a well-defended space-station and/or vocational school, poison gas traps...the parallels are stunning.  Sadly, The Poison Sky doesn't have the overt homoeroticism of the earlier story ("Come here, Jamie...look at that." "Look at the size of that thing, Doctor!" "Yes, Jamie...it is a big one."), but at least the Sontarans this time around aren't played by sock puppets.  By the end I found myself thoroughly enjoying most of the ride, despite more than a few painful moments.

Unfortunately, after it was all over, I had a few minutes to think about the plot, and try as I may I just can't ignore the more glaring errors in logic and plausibility...

...but you know what they say about hindsight: it makes an ass out of u and me.  No wait...that doesn't sound right.

Why do turds suddenly appear...?

Oddly enough, I'm not particularly bothered by a number of the things that have all the rest of the fans up in arms.  Sure, the Sontaran stratagem itself is pretty ridiculous, but inappropriately convoluted plans which don't hold up to scrutiny are par-for-the-course in this sort of thing, and I can forgive it, if only for nostalgic reasons.  I'm similarly nonplussed about the lack of roast pigeons and burning buildings in the wake of the the Doctor lighting the atmosphere on fire, as there have been some at-least-reasonably-plausible ideas floated around to explain away at least portions of this.

Martha's magic nuclear-weapon-halting iPhone, however, is just beyond the pale.  Sure film and television have never been anything but disastrous in their attempts to portray actual computer use, but that still doesn't justify why full control of the collected nuclear arsenals of the assorted nations of the earth would be given to a medical student working for a shadowy British organization.  In fact, try to imagine the assorted nations of earth, particularly the ones listed, agreeing to let anyone else have control.  (It's interesting to note that Russia and its thousands of nuclear weapons seem to be exempted from this arrangement, as well as Israel.  They're probably the stubborn countries who don't want to play nice.)  So she somehow has total control, except only so far as she can hang around her Blackberry in order to press "no" every time it asks "Do you want to play global thermonuclear war?"

Birds sing.  People applaud. Officers snog.  I cringe.

Some people have cited the "atmospheric converter" as just another RTD/Helen Raynor deus-ex-machina solution to all of our problems.  I don't think it quite falls into that category, but they sure could have let us onto it a little earlier.  In the The Sontaran Stratagem, the Doctor has the opportunity to gurn about Luke's lab, excited at all the nice terraforming toys he had to play with.  You'd think that would be a fine time to mention an "atmospheric converter."  As for what it did  (essentially just start the clone-food on fire), as I mentioned, that isn't particularly appalling to me...but some of the details on how they handled it were.  Did you see how fast that stuff went?  That fire propagates around the entire world in less than a minute.  This is fast. We're talking, like, sonic boom fast.  Maybe if they get it to burn around the world backwards and fast enough they can make time go in reverse ("everyone get down!  Time is reversing!") like in Superman. Strangely, however, when the flaming sky is burning its way past, say, the Empire State Building or the Valiant, it's just crawling along. And then the worst bit is how it all clears up.  Instantly.  It's calm.  Blue skies staring at you.  No dust is sucked up into massive mushroom clouds or any of that.  Birds sing.  People applaud. Officers snog.  I cringe.  The scientific implausibility of this is bad enough...but the worst part about it is how nauseatingly clichéd and obnoxiously, hollowly uplifting it is.  If this had been the actual climax of the episode, I'd have been much more disappointed, but fortunately when this is over, we still had to deal with...

The Littlest Sontaran:

Last week, in my review for The Sontaran Stratagem, I bemoaned the inevitable redemption of the boy genius.  I thought for sure Rattigan would inevitably see the error of his ways, decide killing the rest of the human race was just too horrible, stop being a Collaborator, and then jump ship to help the Doctor save the planet.  I'm pleased to note that things turned out better than I feared.  Luke became an enemy of the Sontarans not because of some sort of moral salvation, but because the Sontarans betrayed him.  The closest thing he got to redemption was revenge.

While I thought perhaps his temper-tantrum, when the other members of The Bloodhound Gang in their red hoodies refused to play an impromptu game of space explorer with him as the world asphyxiated, was a bit over-the-top, I enjoyed watching Rattigan's world crumble around him.  From his displays of cocksure arrogance ("It's time I made a move, sir...I have soldiers of my own.") to his panic at the defection of his gang ("I'm cleverer than everyone...you hear me??  I'm clever!") to learning of his betrayal ("but you promised!") to the final insult of the Doctor casually emasculating him ("If I see one more gun..."), the Decline and Fall of Luke Rattigan was a wonder to behold.

...I have no doubt that the Doctor would have ultimately pressed the button after giving the Sontarans his obligatory eighteen or twenty chances to surrender...

Despite Luke's seeming impotence, however, the biggest irony of the episode is that General Staal succeeded in making him into a better Sontaran than most, including Commander Skorr (star of AIP's "I Was a Teenage Sontaran"), who, despite his own youthful glee about battle, might as well have just thrown himself in front of a bus.  Luke, on the other hand, was not only unafraid to die in battle, but when he does his "something clever" he glories in taking his betrayers down with him.  While I have no doubt that the Doctor would have ultimately pressed the button after giving the Sontarans his obligatory eighteen or twenty chances to surrender, deep down he was keeping hope alive that the Sontarans just might manage to come around to his wholly un-Sontaran solution; Luke, on the other hand, didn't give a rat's ass about offering them the option, and although Luke's substitution may have been predictable, it was so well executed (no pun intended) that I couldn't help but grin happily as he yelled "Sontar-ha!" at a bunch of dumbfounded Sontarans.

The Secret Weapon:

Five episodes into Series 4 and Catherine Tate is continuing her tour-de-force performance as the Doctor's most well-constructed companion.  Although she's required to lay on the emotion a little heavy with Bernard Cribbins, as usual, and we have to deal with too many scenes of Sylvia being annoying (what is with RTD and making every companion's mother a godawful harpy?  Even the one in The Sarah Jane Adventures is dim as a post and thoroughly unlikeable), she once again manages to imbue her character with wit, convincing emotion, and genuine likeability.  And I think the scriptwriters even managed to avoid having her say "dumbo" in this one.

Among the highlights this time around are the scene where the Doctor gives Donna her own key to the TARDIS, which contrasts nicely with the way it's been handled with the other companions: "maybe we'll get sentimental after the world's finished choking to death," and her heroic turn on the Sontaran space station where she's largely on her own sabotaging teleporters and tattooing Sontarans' Diocese on the backs of their necks.

That Appalling Mongrel Dialect:

The Poison Sky, despite all its faults, provided some excellent screen-chewing opportunities for David Tennant.  Best among these is probably the conference call he sets up with General Staal posing as a diplomat.  This provides some excellent exchanges between the Doctor, Staal and Colonel Mace.  Tennant should get more of these opportunities to lay into his enemies.  In addition to managing some exposition in a less clumsy manner than unconvincing news-anchors, and being generally highly entertaining, this short interlude includes as a bonus a reference to the war with the Rutans and no less than two allusions to The Two Doctors.

While much of UNIT was rather large and unwieldly, what with their platoons of junior-college soldiers and lorry full of computers (I miss the good old days, when they were about the size of Torchwood's Cardiff branch and they were lucky if they had silverware), I rather enjoyed the Doctor's interactions with Colonel Mace.  His sort of put-upon-ness and attempts to retain some sort of control while being clearly out-of-his-depth actually remind me of the Brigadier (much more so than anything else about UNIT 2008 reminds me of anything about UNIT 1970's-or-80's), and as a result he gets most of the best interactions with Tennant.  From the without-any-missed-beats "Are you my mummy?" to the Doctor's sheepish denial of "Getting a taste for it" to the Colonel's McCrimmonesque reaction to the Doctor's "diplomacy", the chemistry between Mace and the Doctor is top-notch.  I hope they bring him back and make him a regular Brigadier-type foil for the Doctor for years to come (in the 2010's-or-20's).

One last Tennant line deserving mention is the Doctor's reaction to the TARDIS going missing (again): "I'm stuck on earth, like...like an ordinary person...like a human.  How rubbish is that?  Sorry, no offense, but come on!"

Choking on it:

It would seem that, as the evidence piles up, that Helen Raynor has clear strengths and weaknesses in her writing.  Much like RTD, she seems to have a bit of a knack for those witty one-liners and humorous reparteé, but her more "emotional" bits are laid on with a trowel, and heaven forfend she try to shoehorn her "message" awkwardly into the plot.  I'm all for politicizing fiction, subtly or otherwise, but it has to done with some degree of finesse and it has to make some sort of sense, or we get humans and pig-slaves living together in connubial bliss.  (That's why it happens in all those shitty Ayn Rand books.)

...how did they manage to script you to be simultaneously thick and two-dimensional?

"All those things they said about pollution and ozone and carbon....they're really happening, aren't they?"  Uh...no, Sylvia, that dreadful fog was from an alien plot to destroy the earth; how did they manage to script you to be simultaneously thick and two-dimensional?  Sure, pollution, ozone and carbon are still, uh, "happening", and cars are still 800 million poisonous death machines spread across the globe, but that really wasn't the central motivation of the plot, and making that the moral of the story just sort of feels like you're peeing it in my eye.

The Undefeated:

Although it seems like only last week the Doctor described the Sontarans as "The Finest Soldiers in the Galaxy", and he spent much of The Poison Sky screaming about how UNIT can't possibly fight them, the Sontarans don't appear to be much cop when their oponents actually have working weapons.  Sure, Skorr is having a gay old time shooting UNIT's grunts in the face while their weapons don't work...he's like Dick Cheney at a quail hunt.  But, deal with the copper-excitation problem and a gang of Ritalin-addled Girl Guides could hold the Sontarans down and give them noogies until the cows come home.  Once Mace has made his little speech about how indomitable the human race is or whatever, the Death Star shows up to blow away all the fog and fire lasers at the factory, UNIT attacks with its shiny new bullets, and apparently the incredible warriors turn out to be sort of rubbish.  No wonder the Rutans have been holding them at a draw for fifty thousand years.

The Two Marthas:

And, finally, once again, Martha is the soaring eagle sucked through the jet engines of Doctor Who as Freema Agyeman continues her downward spiral.  In her short visit to Torchwood she was less lively than the dead character, and that continues here. Whether it's Evil Martha's piss-poor attempt to deceive the Doctor or Less-than-Evil Martha's general blandness, she keeps coming up shorter than...well, than Sontarans.

...for fuck's sake.

The weakest Martha Moment in The Poison Sky would be the scene when Good Martha encounters Evil Martha and they commune over shared memories.  It was so cringe-inducingly over-sentimental and amateurly acted that I wished Martha coming in contact with Antimartha would have resulted in their mutual annihilation and an explosion big enough to be heard in Seville.  Overbearingly sappy music and dreadfully pretentious scripting don't help matters: Evil Martha's final line is "Martha Jones...all that life!", for fuck's sake.

At the end-of-episode cliffhanger, as the doors slam shut and the Doctor's disembodied hand begins to froth and sputter like an agitated otter, the Doctor delivers his obligatory "What?! What?!"  Realizing that we're going to be saddled with not-Evil Martha for who-knows-how-many more stories, I was left shouting "Why?! Why?!"

Begun, this Clone War Has

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

Environmentalists rejoice! This episode of Doctor Who condemns air pollution, and there's even quite a lot of recycling. And world hunger is instantly solved much to the astonished offense of vegetarians everywhere when the entire sky goes up in flames and a variety of fried birds drop onto everybody's doorstep. Regardless of the plot recycling and illogic, this was a vast improvement over part one and I quite enjoyed it for a variety of reasons.

The characterization of Staal continued to impress me. Skor, not so much. Why was he so excited when he said “this isn’t war, this is sport”? Wouldn’t it have made much more sense for him to have been disappointed by that? Somehow I didn't think the Sontarans had a sense of sport. They always struck me as the sort of guys who'd rather play Risk than, say, Tennis. I believe that in the previous episode, the Doctor demonstrated the hazards that this might present for them. Anyhow, it’s not important, because Skor wasn’t the important Sontaran, Staal was. And Staal worked well, because he was stamping around and being bullishly violent which was, essentially, the same thing Colonel Mace was doing. The contrast and similarity between the two lends a lot of interest to them, and I'm somewhat sad that the snogging scene between Staal and Rattigan was cut in post. Still, it seems like the "stratagem" of the Sontarans was unnecessarily complicated and not quite Sontaran enough for me. Simply trying to destroy Earth makes a bit more sense, which is what it came down to anyway after the Doctor and UNIT solved the air problem with a few questionably logical but spectacular and dramatic deus ex machinas such as a giant ceiling fan attached to the bottom of last year's plot, or a massive air ionizer that's been modded by a pyromaniac. Meanwhile, the mention of the war against the Rutans got my hopes up a bit that they would factor into this story, but surprise! they didn't. I still hope it's not just an easter egg but a setup for a later plot. Ditto to the mention of "Sir Alastair," although I suppose that one's even less likely to manifest.

We all know people that are a lot like Rattigan: too clever for their own good, too interested in eugenics to have many friends, and too gay for John Barrowman.

Regardless of the Sontarans resorting to plan B, the tried-and-true senseless violence plan, the day is unsurprisingly saved by our boy genius. And it turns out, refreshingly, that he's more "boy" than "genius," as we see him act like an actual teenager, with all of the arrogance, petulance, obstinacy, and crippling emotional issues that go with the territory. He even falls on the floor of the teleport and dissolves into tears when he's been let down by his students and the aliens he was meant to help. Rattigan's ego grates on one's nerves a bit, it's true, but I think we all know people that are a lot like Rattigan: too clever for their own good, too interested in eugenics to have many friends, and too gay for John Barrowman. But despite his flaws he's one of those characters that you look at and think that he might even be good companion material. Having a character like that is a great asset to a story, as Blink and Human Nature proved last year. And even though Rattigan's no Sally Sparrow, and he doesn't seem to understand the difference between a tautology and a merely redundant phrase, he still stands out as an excellent character who plays with cliche and makes it entertaining.

And speaking of companions, I actually appreciated Freema Agyeman's performance this time. The moment between Martha and her clone was legitimately touching, and well-acted. That's the Martha I remember! Two of her, in fact! After how poorly they've treated the character lately, she deserved to be in this episode twice over. And I'm glad she's finally been put into an episode in which she has relevance and accomplishes interesting things I'm looking at you, Owen Harper Trilogy Travesty! It's good to see that she's grown more mature rather than simply lamer as we had been previously led to suspect. I was worried that at the end she would decide to travel with the Doctor, which would have been damaging to her characterization. And frankly, her characterization can't take the hit right now. But as it stands, I'm simultaneously glad of the fact that she's coming along and of the fact that she's unwilling. I hope this leads to some proper opportunity for her to interact with Donna, because their sparse moments together are wonderful.

Of course, that's probably because Donna's so wonderful. I continued to appreciate Donna's presence to the point that it's getting tiresome to write about it. She's excellent! I can't complain about anything. This is even, nay, especially true as we saw her thrown behind enemy lines and forced to help the Doctor out via the recycled material lifted from Age of Steel, as well as whatever weapon she happens to grab in the TARDIS. Donna's scenes on the Sontaran mothership demonstrate that she's becoming useful as well as a compelling character, which is something I appreciate quite a bit. And Donna's family manages to maintain my interest, because Wilfred is officially my favorite companion family member, ever, even if Donna's mum is officially the most boring. It seems that they are playing a far-background role this season, of which I approve.

And the Doctor's characterization was as bizarre in this episode as it was in the last. Playing along with Martha's clone was Doctorish enough, but using her and then essentially killing her without trying to fix it, or even a trademark "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry?" Stranger still is his utter lack of appreciation for Rattigan's sacrifice, even after recognizing him as a kindred spirit in the previous episode. I'm not sure if this is some new direction the character's taking or just awkwardness on the part of this story. I suppose it won't take long to find out.

I'm tired of Rose already and she's not even back yet.

And then the Rose cameo... God, that was stupid, wasn't it? I wasn't really all that surprised to see her at all. After her absolutely excellent cameo appearance in Partners in Crime and the not-particularly-subtle use of the Doomsday theme in Planet of the Ood, this was even further in the downward spiral from gasp to yawn. I'm tired of her already and she's not even back yet. It mostly has to do with the incredibly poor execution; throwing Billie Piper's face into the middle of another scene distracts from the plot of the episode and disallows the cameo from making the impact they wanted it to. I seriously hope that they have a decent story built around Rose's return because I'm not impressed by the way they've decided to handle the buildup.

I seem like I'm going on about all of these flaws too much. Or maybe not; I'm just a bit wary of sounding too negative after the minor (and now deleted) flame war that ensued in the comments of my last review. But it wasn't so bad; unlike the flames in this episode, those flames didn't exhaust an entire planet's worth of clone fodder and the whole of the Upper Boat's effects budget for the year. So no negativity here: I really did find this two parter a lot of fun, and I am enjoying this series greatly and look forward to each episode with eager anticipation. Especially the next one: man, The Doctor's Daughter's a looker, isn't she? Now there's a Doctor Who guest star who can excite the copper in the bullets of my rifle any time she likes.

Vote: The Poison Sky

Here are the results for the fifth blog poll, for The Poison Sky:

• 81%: Superb - Laughing Gas
• 19%: Not Good - Tear Gas

The sixth Doctor Who poll, for The Doctor's Daughter, will be online later tonight following the broadcast of the episode.

Noble Gases

Regular viewers will be all too familiar with the suggestion that ten years from now we'd witness a season climax in which a Myrka bitch-slapped some Sensorites. Let me expand upon that slightly. We'd get the Myrka/Sensorites slap-off, with the unfolding horror being presented to the gelatinous pasty-faced populace via some faked rolling news coverage. Of course by then, the only person left in the BBC News organisation who hadn't fronted news footage for Doctor Who, would probably be someone from Look East who was usually to be found reporting on outbreaks of sheep dysentery in remote pockets of Norfolk rather than trying to force feed gravitas into footage of men in latex slapping each other's protuberances.

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

And so it falls to Kirsty Wark to inject some verisimilitude into the proceedings. Verisimilitude. I hope that's the right word, I don't want a greasy-headed micro boffin taking me to task on my words and that. That would be too much to take. So, leaving absolutely no pudding over-egged, Kirsty wades into the news report with her headline sleeves rolled right up ready to go elbow deep in search of fact. I say verisimilitude, but she's fronting rolling news, something (as far as I'm aware) she has never done, for a channel which changed its name some weeks ago. If the Who team were attempting to inject a little more controversy into the realm of UNIT dating then mission accomplished. Sir!

Stumbled headlong into Boris Johnson's bed chamber at 3 in the morning.

But, as ever, that's not the main issue. By rights I should be a tad more concerned by what appears to be the sole North American news anchor who seems to have been on continual duty since 2005. Without a break for so much as a plate of biscuits and gravy (don't panic people, it's not what you think). The BBC, at least, has it's own rolling news channel that it can use as a visual crutch for the viewer who, in a world of reality tele, might not be able to cope with the concept of drama. You've really got to pity ITV (up to their post-watershed knackers in another public voting furore) as they struggle manfully through a pile of utter tripe like Flood with only a lashed up, generic, rolling news service that looks so amateurish a three year old with a vague grasp of Flash and beans down its front could have produced better. No, we've got the BBC News Channel and we know how to use it. So, Mr Public Service Broadcaster, why didn't you use your power and serve the public. You could have packaged up all the BBC newsy bits from the past 4 years of Doctor Who into a montage, stumbled headlong into Boris Johnson's bed chamber at 3 in the morning, woken the slumbering fool and told him that these events were happening... right this minute. In London. Now! That would have ensured a quick exit from the mayoral race and prevented the regular sight of silly hair across our screens for the next four long years.

Shaven UNIT stunners.

But until he really gets going, probably once nanny's starched his pens and dressed him as Little Lord Fauntleroy, we'll have to do with fixating over the Doctor's silly hair. It might be because of his close proximity to the military regulation short back and sides, clean shaven UNIT stunners, but I was continually marvelling at his sideboards. Not since 70's Porn Colin have I seen that much hair business going on on one Doctor's face. Is there really any need for that? At least we know why Captain Jack never saw himself in UNIT - he wouldn't have been able to stomach the regulation hair cuts. That and you just know he would have tried to blow dry his own hair using the down-draft from the Valiant's engines.

Should have gone to Ant and/or Dec in the first place.

But once you're past the ebullient nature of the Time Lord's cheek fuzz, pause for a moment at the bit when he finally gives Donna a key. Where does he get this endless supply of TARDIS keys from? Has he got a trans-dimensional branch of Timpsons shut away in one of his captious jacket pockets - doing now but churning out a constant supply of the buggers and replacing the heals on his platform shoes?

And did he really mean to give Catherine Tate the key? Some years down the line are we going to have an investigation led by Pixley and a team of crack auditors that reveal she shouldn't have gotten the key at all and it should have gone to Ant and/or Dec? Will they also reveal that Big Ron should have beaten Mandy to help out the Doctor on his non-canonical visit to Walford? Suppose anything's possible... including the fact that we can still convince Mayor BoJo that all these alien threats to London are real.

Quick everyone, strap yourself into the latex and follow me. Last one to City Hall is a Myrka's arse.

Where's The Bloody Foam Machine?

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

Harrumph. Bah, humbug.

So what exactly happened here? Was it the 'monster first, script second' dynamic, which, if I were feeling especially cruel, I might cite the viewing figures as possible proof? Was it a Helen Raynor hangover? Or is it, as Neil is all but screaming from the rafters and not without justification, just me?

Well, let's review what we learned in this episode. For openers, demanding that an army which values death before personal dishonour goes home with their metaphorical tails between their legs is categorically not in any way a good idea. With two decades separating The Poison Sky from The Two Doctors (which most well-meaning fans and Tat Wood try their hardest to forget), it's absolutely proper for the episode to demonstrate to the newer audience that Sontarans practice what they preach and what their response would be. So that's one-nil to Neil. But not for the first time in a Helen Raynor two-parter is the Tenth Doctor made to look, at the very least, a naive fool.

This is different from The Parting Of The Ways, where pressing the plunger would have taken out not only himself, the satellite and the Daleks, but everyone on the planet below, and the Ninth Doctor couldn't bring himself to do it. Here, the only sacrifice that would be made besides the Sontarans is himself, and the Earth will be destroyed if he doesn't. And this Doctor can topple governments from the sidelines, he can wipe out a species in the name of justice with the flick of a switch, but when he has to look into the face of his opponent, suddenly he can't pull the trigger; and while it wasn't the intention, the scene goes on for so long and times it so close to the wire that it doesn't half look like he's stalling for time until the inevitable beamed-in redemption that takes his place. Couldn't they have made him show a little remorse or surprise, or at least ask what happened when he comes back out?

The Sontaran way is normally to barge in like you own the place, then pound away at it until you do

I'm not letting the potato-heads off the hook that easily either, because there's an awful lot of boondoggle to the Sontaran plan. Surely there must be quicker and easier ways to gas a planet? The Doctor would think so too, since he knows as well as we do that the Sontaran way is normally to barge in like you own the place, then pound away at it until you do - and if the Sontarans had simply turned up and declared war on the Earth, let the humans launch their nukes to no effect, and then bombarded them up with gas grenades until they choked while mopping up the resistance, they'd have won by a mile. No plonkering about waiting for ATMOS to do its job really slowly while hoping nobody lights a fag in the meantime. And no need in your gameplan either for a duplicitous pissed-off agent who might conceivably use his genius and your own technology to bite you in the ass once the jig is up. Risk assessment ought to have seen that one coming. Have we got to the point now where RTD and his writing team have upped the whammo stakes in the alien invasion plot so many times, that new invasions have to be written with built-in catastrophic flaws in order for the human race to stand any chance of winning? It sure looks that way.

And I'm sorry, but there's no getting around it: the science on display is miserable. It's not like Evolution Of The Daleks, where Helen Raynor was making up stuff on the top of her head; rather, it's logic and reason being sacrificed on the altar of boffo CGI effects, and not really 'science' per se. Possibly I've been traumatised reviewing the six-part snoozeathon that was The Seeds of Death, as it's exactly the same kind of credibility gap that that one had, only more expensive. Let's say that you have got a gas dense enough to need a Valiant-sized jet engine to blow it away, that accumulates at skyscraper level instead of on the ground and burns without incinerating anyone that's breathing the stuff in. There's still the small matter of the 70 percent of the Earth's surface covered by water - you know, the bit with no cars in it - which is kind of crucial if the Doctor hopes to get rid of it all in one go in a massively cool-looking way. I can accept one or the other, but not both.

OK, I'll come right out and say it: who else, after the Valiant appeared, couldn't help thinking of the giant robot maid from Spaceballs, coming to vacuum the entire atmosphere up?

Shall we try a compromise? The Poison Sky is season four's equivalent, so far, of a Micheal Bay blockbuster. But just because an episode is a massive crowd-pleaser, doesn't mean it's all that great or memorable when you come to watch it again. There's a lot of great setpieces and character moments; Rattigan's petulant temper tantrum perfectly underscores how pathetic and impotent he really is, and the UNIT/Doctor relation, where neither of them are fully in the right or the wrong, would have been unthinkable under Barry Letts stewardship. But in spite of all the old-style UNIT and Sontaran trappings, its classic-Who heart very much belongs in the JN-T gaudiness of the 80s, in the same way that Earthshock and Resurrection Of The Daleks absolutely bowled me over when I was twelve. We've been down this road many times already in the last few years; it looks like the regular folks have better things to do on an early Saturday evening and the earlier timeslot has more work to do to keep everyone interested. All eyes are certainly going to be the upcoming viewing figures for this Saturday, when the show has a go at something different and surprising again - stuff the sprog, this'll be the episode that gives birth to a million slash fics. Brrrrr.

The Fog of War

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

I fell down some stairs a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, the blow that I sustained to the back of the head seems to have done wonders for my appreciation of Doctor Who. This time last year I would have been sticking the boot in with the best of them but I have to admit that I'm finding it rather difficult to say a bad word about The Poison Sky. If only I could get rid of the migraines...

Another reason why I'm currently embracing the show, rather than picking at it like an infected scab, is probably thanks to combination of Britain's Got Talent and Battlestar Galactica. I don't watch Doctor Who at 6:20pm (I'm not that mad), I tend to watch it after I've immersed myself in the relentless misery that is BGT and BSG. These programmes, no matter how groundbreaking and/or thrilling they are, also invariably result in one of the most depressing, soul-destroying and bitterly distressing experiences that you can put yourself through whilst slumped on a sofa. So, what better way to soothe your furrowed brow than a concentrated dose of pure escapist fun?

Has Doctor Who ever been this much fun before? Seriously? UNIT getting its arse kicked by Sontarans. The Sontarans getting its arse kicked by UNIT. The Doctor kicking everyone's arse. Does it really get any better than that? This was far more thrilling than watching emotionless Cybermen and Daleks bitch-slapping each other, and the direction and music conspired get my juices flowing even more than Iron Man did (and I loved that too!). Even during a second viewing, when I was more than prepared to critically savage it in the cold light of day, I still found myself being caught up in the drama of it all. So many great moments: Colonel Mace finally growing some balls, the victorious return of the Valiant, Bernard Cribbens sending his granddaughter on an adventure of a lifetime. For once, I could actually buy into the Doctor's ebullient cry of  "Bwrilliant!!'

This was far more thrilling than watching emotionless Cybermen and Daleks bitch-slapping each other...

In fact, Tennant has never been better. Aside from one terrible moment when he says "belittle" as if he's stifling a burp, I was utterly captivated by his performance this week. This is the Doctor I've been waiting for. His fear of the Sontaran war machine, masked by his dismissive treatment of Staal; his helplessness in the face of a nuclear count-down; his unbridled anger as the UNIT troops are butchered; his appreciation and love for his companions - he's marvellous in each and every scene. But best of all, his attempts to talk the Sontarans out of a no-win situation perfectly encapsulates what makes the Doctor a unique and inspiring hero. Coward, my arse.

One of the criticisms I've seen levelled at this episode is the fact that the gas defies all known laws of chemistry, physics and technobabble.  Personally, I don't give a toss if the gas burns up quickly and harmlessly. This is Doctor Who, not some hard-hitting sci-fi like Blake's 7, you know! This show has been making scientific faux pas from the very start; its track record when it comes to real science has been laughable so criticising its treatment of fake pseudo-science seems pointless in the extreme. And before you start, there's a fundamental difference between the bad science of The Poison Sky and the bad science of, say, Evolution of the Daleks. While a DNA-lightning conductor feels like an improbable, coincidental and thoroughly contrived plot enabler, the clone feed gas in this story not only felt right, it looked unbelievably cool, too.

Sure, there's plenty of stuff that I should be railing against: the convenient axe, Donna crying five times in four episodes (we get it, she can act!), Sylvia Noble (Jacqueline King is pitching her performance as if she's taking part in Rentaghost), and the Sontaran's ineffectual armour are all fairly galling, but they never conspire to bring the whole thing crashing in on itself.

This is the Doctor I've been waiting for...

However, as much as I enjoyed Luke Rattigan, I have to admit that he is the worst cult leader the world has ever seen. Perhaps he should have been dropping hints about leaving for an alien planet a little earlier in the curriculum. During the academy's fresher's week might have been a good idea. Springing this surprise on his "followers" at the eleventh hour was a little stupid for such an intelligent chap, but his uncontrollable ego just about makes it feasible. Rattigan was a fascinating character and his redemptive "Sontar-HA!" was so deliciously cathartic I simply don't understand how any sane person didn't punch the air and shout "Get In!" as the Sontaran ship went tits up.

And, for the briefest of moments, we got a 21st century version of the classic - yet overcrowded - TARDIS team, with Donna as Tegan, Martha as Nyssa and Luke as Adric. A subtle but oh-so-satisfying squee from me.

But what I loved most of all was how this two-parter, a few episodes into the run, had the look and feel of a season climax. A hint of self-sacrifice, a huge explosion, returning monsters, a chorus of "What? What? What?' and a glorious, old-skool cliffhanger that wouldn't have been out of place in the Hartnell or Davison era. It was ridiculously exciting.

Piper is on screen for less than a second and yet she gets fourth billing in the credits!

And whatever you do - don't blink! If you do you'll miss the practically subliminal appearance of Rose Tyler. She's on screen for less than a second and yet she gets fourth billing in the credits! Fourth! Admittedly she made more of an impact than Martha Jones, but surely that's just silly, isn't it? No wonder the credits flew by so fast.

Next week looks like an exercise in ming-mong baiting gone mad. Prepare yourself for floods of messages pointing out that the Doctor had a granddaughter in the very first episode, lots and lots of fanboy denial, a distressed Lance Parkin, and theories about the Doctor and Romana shagging themselves senseless on the randomiser as K9 looks on dispassionately. I can hardly wait!

Laughing Gas

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

Memory Lane

The Poison Sky was something of a nostalgia trip, for me at least.  At university (the second time around) one of the set assignments was to show how a piece of fantasy or sci-fi inspired literature or poetry of a picture or song might be adapted into a film.  Given that I had a brilliant tutor who liked Doctor Who, and having just read it, I decided to tackle Lance Parkin’s Eighth Doctor novel The Dying Days.  To cut to the chase, I decided the best way to set it apart from Hollywood would be to do all of the special effects ‘in camera’ (mad eh?) using models, mirrors and in the case of the murderous Red Death which ravaged the small village of Adisham, smoke. 

As I said in the supporting essay, “The Red Death, which would otherwise undoubtedly be a candidate for computer generation using ‘particle simulators’ might carefully, using camera angles, frame skipping and rapid montage, find life through smoke blowers and red dye.”  So it was quite heartening to see, in Doctor Who Confidential, members of the production team desperately trying to waft smoke into shot, pleading with it to stay there before the wind changed.  Of course, the weapon of the Ice Warriors was far more malevolent than the gas passed onto the planet by the Sontarans – the eradication of the human race was still a priority, give or take some environmental reconstruction, which just goes to show that Parkin’s novel continues to be the I Ching of these globe effecting alien invasion stories.

The Land of Happy Endings

If the crowd pleasing spectacle that would have been my adaptation of The Dying Days will never see the light of day (you would have cheered when Paul saved the cat), the other half of my opinion is that The Poison Sky was as good as this type of story gets, a zinger which more than delivered on the promise of the opening episode.  It’s equally difficult reviewing a second episode because you find yourself repeating yourself yourself but this was just as dense managing to somehow tie together all of the elements convincingly and drawing in some hot UNIT v Sontaran action, Catherine Tate being amazing again, apocalyptic visions, global catastrophe and Kirstie Wark.  Unlike many second halves, this was also genuinely a continuation of the story, not simply the firing off of a new set of events in the same scenario. 

Box-ticking resolutions have always been a component of these concluding parts, but on this occasion it all seemed perfectly valid to give misguided genius boy Luke an extended resolution and evil Martha more to do in with her dying breath and most of the rest of the episode (producing one of Freema’s best scenes ever for the series).  True, this also led to the Doctor largely flitting between locations sorting out problems like an alien plate spinner or a contestant on The Crystal Maze, but at least he acknowledged it and we were able to witness the brilliant moment in which what looked like glorious climax to the episode, the burning sky, was undercut by his matter of fact realisation that the worst was yet to come.  Along with his ‘Please, please, please, please, please …’ and the almost grand gesture, I don’t think the Tenth Doctor’s been closer to his eighth incarnation. 

Perceptions

Was it gratuitous to hover in the Valiant?  No but it was logical and actually one of the pleasures of the episode was the number of times it did exactly what we were thinking.  Almost, no actually, every review of last week’s episode, including my own, noted that the best way to save Bernard was to break the glass and sure enough the suddenly ballsy Sylvia goes at it with an axe.  The Doctor’s standing there in a gas mask and he actually said ‘Are you my mummy?’ out loud before we could in the kind of wink to the audience not seen since Tom addressed us in The Face of Evil.  Where’s the Brig?  It turns out Sir Alistair’s in Peru (Why Peru?  That’s too random a location not to be some kind of set up for a future appearance).  And indeed, where’s the Valiant?  Oh, there it is. 

Some people rather grumpy about these kinds of references and thinks that the series has lost its element of surprise.  Personally, I think the surprise is that the series is confident enough to make these kinds of touchstone allusions ‘in passing’ (as opposed to kronkburgers) and unlike the Gallifrey flashback from The Sound of Drums or the Macra making them an event.  Presumably the production team feel that the series has been back in circulation long enough for even latent viewers to have caught up with some of what they’ve forgotten, that Jon didn’t just battle Welsh maggots week in and out and will know who the Brigadier is. 

As a sidebar, isn’t it odd that the BBC charter, which stopped the new series having direct continuity with the spin-off fiction since it can’t force viewers to buy one thing to understand what’s happening in another, does allow the reintroduction of elements which in general can only be enjoyed these days through the purchasing of dvds?  Why is it right that we can have Sontarans on screen in the same month as the Bred for War boxset, but the production team wouldn’t be allowed to bring back a certain archaeologist played by Lisa Bowerman?

The Crooked World

I’ve read some quite detailed debunking of the Doctor’s solution to ridding the world of the gas, noting how unlikely it is that the Earth doesn’t show some physical ill effects given the intensity of the heat, largely forgetting that this Doctor bloody Who not a Kim Stanley Robinson Mars novel and that scientific accuracy has always taken a back seat to exciting imagery (depending upon the budget).  Like all fantasy realms, the natural laws clearly work differently in the Whoniverse where, lets not forget, people can time travel in machines whose interior real estate makes the barns masquerading as houses on Grand Design look like a lean-to on a terraced council dwelling.  Are we suddenly at the stage were the bad science that brought to a conclusion to many a story in the past should be seen as faux-pas enough for a whole story to be dismissed out of hand despite everything else which is going on?  If so, then we’re just fulfilling the stereotype of us the not-we had in the past before they became the we too.

Fallen Gods

Hello again Rose and wasn’t that interesting?  The former companion seems to have found some way of communicating across the void, but can’t quite manage to become corporeal enough to make herself heard.  My immediate thought about the shenanigans at the end of the episode was that she can at least give the Tardis a nudge (the movement wasn’t unlike the dimensional break from Rise of the Cybermen) but the appendage in a bottle will probably be the more likely source.

Next Week:  She doesn’t look old enough to be Susan’s mother.  But then again, regenerations can do wonders.  Look at Iris Wildthyme...

Small Man Syndrome

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

Colin Baker used to describe Doctor Who has a “home baked loaf.” Once a Baker, always a baker, I suppose - but there was a general feeling abroad in the 80s that the only way Who could hold its own in the post-Star Wars era was by adopting the mantra that less is more; that, necessity being the mother of invention and all, the limitations of the budget actually resulted in better, more imaginative scripts.

This is not quite the desperate, rearguard defence it might appear (after all, which would you rather watch, Sapphire & Steel or the Thunderbirds movie?) - it’s just unfortunate that almost all of Colin’s scripts turned out, in the end, to be bollocks. But even during the pitiless depths of Timelash et al, there was a still sense of Doctor Who offering something a little more literate (i.e. talky); a little more BBC than the flashy pyrotechnics of The A-Team on “the other side”.

There's a reason BA Baracus and co bitch-slapped poor old Colin into extinction

Trouble is, while many of us grown-ups might still prefer our Who smaller, cleverer, Blinkier, there’s a reason BA Baracus and co bitch-slapped poor old Colin into extinction, and it’s that kids – even the brainy kids who choose smart, funny, goofy Doctor Who over slick, cynical McTie-ins like Transformers – really do like flashy pyrotechnics. And guns - lots of very big, very loud guns.

The Poison Sky, then, is what happens when Doctor Who can afford not to have three people standing about in TC3 discussing recursive occlusion and instead go balls-out for action-packed Spectacle. So if the episode was a bit rubbish, it’s because, well, kids are a bit rubbish. And, as we have to constantly remind ourselves through grinding teeth, this is their show now, and they’re entitled to a couple of big dumb shoot-em-ups each season, leaving us to feel the hot, prickly shame of partners and parents and friends’ accusing eyes upon us, and to wonder what that nice Mr Moffatt has up his sleeve for a few weeks’ time.

(Also, as Uncle Russell keeps reminding us, these days Doctor Who has to compete against shows with big shiny floors, and if there’s one thing viewers find it physically impossible to resist, it’s a shiny floor. Apparently. Personally, I think he’s confusing us with crows, but there you go.)

In case it’s not coming through, The Poison Sky and I didn’t really get along. Which is a shame, as I loved the wit and joie de vivre of the opening half, but not entirely unexpected, for reasons discussed last week (see also Evolution of the Daleks, Forcibly Sodomozed By, in JoAnne’s Sontaran Stratagem review). Having now suffered through four of these early season action blow-outs, not to mention a trio of Christmas specials with a specific remit to replace/replicate the once-prized Big Film, I’ve seen enough to know big budget Doctor Who just doesn’t butter my space buns.

Then again, maybe it if was genuine big budget stuff, it wouldn’t be so bad – but it’s painfully obvious the cash still doesn’t quite stretch to the job in hand; hence we get yet another global shitstorm reduced to a bunch of pictures from National Geographic plus Nu-Who’s Armageddon avatar of choice, a panicked BBC newsreader (or Kirsty Wark, as no newsreaders appeared to be available).

If you’re going to not be afraid to shoot over the bar, make sure Phil Collinson hasn’t snuck in and raised it again first

Like the Sontarans themselves, the show occasionally betrays signs of a Napoleon complex: We might not have the chops to keep up with the Indiana Joneses, but we’re sure as hell going to have a go. Really, you can’t fault such vaulting ambition, but there’s a cautionary tale here: If you’re going to not be afraid to shoot over the bar, make sure Phil Collinson hasn’t snuck in and raised it again first.

Both Helen Raynor’s script and Douglas Mackinnon’s direction seemed woefully adrift when it came to building up tension or generating any sense of a gathering threat. This was tell not show television: From Kirsty to Cribbins, everyone was working hard to persuade us the end was nigh, but it was hard to take them seriously when all we got was some dry ice and the odd plate shot of smog-choked London (which, let’s be honest, could have been actual shots of London – and isn’t it ironic this episode was shown on the weekend when the man who introduced the capital’s Low Emission Zone was thrown out of office by of an uprising in the 4x4-driving suburbs?).

Everywhere you looked in The Poison Sky, people were gamely stepping up to compensate for the lack of anything actually happening: The Doctor was flapping about doing his student peacenik shtick, Donna was turning on the waterworks for the third story running and Murray Gold was clearly ignoring what was on screen and scoring a much more impressive movie running in his own head. And, for Confidential viewers, Russell the T was on hand to tell us that, despite all available evidence to the contrary, the scenes with Donna alone aboard the Sontaran ship had been “really scary”. Cheers for that.

To the surprise of precisely no-one, Helen Raynor also cemented her reputation as the undisputed queen of the shameless deus ex machina. After Evolution’s DNA/gamma interface travesty, and the “psychic projection” gubbins that ruined her (otherwise surprisingly half-decent) episode of Torchwood, this time we got the Doctor burning up the skies - of the whole world - with a small patio heater. Built by a teenager. I mean, seriously, WTF? Did it really have to be the entire goddamn planet? Wouldn’t, say, the Home Counties have done the job just as well?

And, as if that weren’t irritating enough, we had to make time for that same self-serving little bastard genius to have his inevitable Big Redemption Scene – because, in case the big floaty resurrection thing in last year’s finale didn’t spell it out clearly enough, in our Godless, post-Nietzschean Universe, it’s now down to the Doctor to lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil and generally harangue us into doing the right thing.

Which is fine – the Time Lord as enabler, saving us from monsters and aliens and a career in retail is not such a bad central ethos for a show to have. It’s just it can start to get a wee bit predictable after a while – kind of like that scene at the end of Diff’rent Strokes where Mr D would lay some of his folksy wisdom on Arnold (“You’ve learned a valuable lesson today, son...").

Even the most enervated Doctor Who still contains enough moments of casual genius to justify hunting down and sterilising the four million people who willingly chose to watch Kids Do The Lamest Things instead

Ultimately, then, The Poison Sky was just a big bloody racket; all sound and fury, signifying precisely zip. But that’s okay, cos I’m sure the kids thought it was (drumroll please) an absolute gas, and even the most enervated Doctor Who still contains enough moments of casual genius to justify hunting down and sterilising the four million people who willingly chose to watch Kids Do The Lamest Things instead. Chief among these, for anyone who still cares, were: A relieved Martha hugging the Doctor, while Donna just gave him a smack – neat visual shorthand for their respective relationships; the “Back of the neck!” gag, Christopher Ryan's wonderfully blustery General Staal and, of course, the almost subliminal re-appearance of Billie Piper, series four’s very own human easter egg.

Inevitably, much is already being made of what exactly Rose was trying to communicate through the TARDIS scanner though, from the face she was making, it’s equally possible the Doctor had simply forgotten to switch off his DVD of Secret Diary of a Call Girl. I mean, letting Donna fly the ship is one thing, but he really ought to think about locking the parental controls on the telly.

NEXT TIME: “Exhausted” Who’s The Daddy headline checks into rehab after week of gruelling tabloid overexposure.

The Gas Man Cometh

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

You can tell it’s a bank holiday.  Why else would Kirsty Wark, the doyenne of Newsnight, One Foot in the Past and, for viewers in Scotland, Words with Wark, be stuck with a newsreading shift?  At least, post Fraser Report, we probably won’t be seeing her making a documentary about the Sontaran invasion.

Yes, once again it was another ridiculous foray into the world of mass media from Doctor Who, as we get our annual glimpse at someone famous from the BBC newsroom desperately trying to ground something ridiculous - like, say, a quarter of the world’s cars suddenly becoming impenetrable poison gas generators.

Notably, we rarely see the same face twice on the BBC, yet that woman from AMNN is always there.  Perhaps she’s America’s answer to Kay Burley, wheeled in front of the cameras whenever there’s a disaster brewing.

I loved the resolution of the cliffhanger, worrying implications for Mrs Noble’s no-claims bonus though it had.  Not to mention Bernard Cribbins’ head.  I’d perhaps have picked a bit of window further away from where the old boy had slumped, just on the off-chance that the follow-through from her psycho woodcutter impersonation went a bit wrong.

She got her revenge though, getting Wilf to seal the house up while she gabbed away on the phone to her daughter.  Cribbins is 80, for goodness sake.  I’d not let my 80-year-old granddad change a washer these days, for fear of a major disaster.  Yet she’s got him down on his hands and knees with the Ronseal.

But that cliffhanger resolution was about all I could enjoy, plotwise, from a story that just felt like a runaway horse, careering down a icy cobbled hill with little to stop it’s momentum.  After all that work last week in producing a tense, enjoyable if somewhat uneven build-up, it utterly failed to deliver.  It's not just the gas hitting 80% density - it's the quality of writing.

Yes, there were some nice touches, and some lovely character moments - the Doctor casually lobbing aside Rattigan’s gun, Donna's believably terrified determination to find the teleport for the Doctor - but there was so much to outweigh them in the nonsense to quality ratio that it became a chore at times to watch.  As with Evolution of the Daleks last year, Helen Raynor’s second episode went royally off a cliff.

Where to start?  Well, let’s try for the climax and work backwards.  Putting aside the basic science of setting fire to the gas, and all the oxygen up there that you think might sustain the blaze - or at the very least, blow the Valiant up in the process - you’d think the Doctor, having condemned his own planet to a fiery death, might consider an alternative to setting the sky ablaze.  Or at the very least, have had the odd flashback and post-traumatic incident.

If you’ve got the kids pondering obvious errors, then Joe Public’s not being fooled

Also, what about all the gas at ground level?  We’ve seen this stuff choking the bejesus out of everyone since it’s coming from car exhausts.  And never mind the trees, birds, exposed humans and everything else that’s just been boiled alive by the resultant heat of igniting all that gas. 

And I’m not just saying this as a cynical, jaded fanboy and hack on the verge of hitting 30 - at least, I hope I'm not.  My eight-year-old nephew - who acts as my benchmark of how good the show is at engaging the target audience - asked why the Valiant or the trees didn’t just catch fire.  And if you’ve got the kids pondering such obvious errors, then Joe Public’s not being fooled by the pyrotechnics and ballyhoo.

Also, if the Valiant’s dispersing the poison gas... where’s it dispersing it too?  France?  Gloucestershire?  Has the density there built up suddenly to more than 80% thanks to rolling clouds of toxic vapour, wiping out Paris and half of Cheltenham in one swift cloud of death, just so the Unified Intelligence Taskforce can storm their local MOT centre?

Plus, as my nephew pointed out, so much for the Doctor’s “You can’t fight the Sontarans” claim.  If the Valiant’s got a bloody great laser mounted underneath hit, why the hell don’t they just keep bombarding the factory with that and wipe all the Sontarans out in one go, rather than engage them in battle?  Even if, we learn very quickly, that Sontaran body armour is about as much use as a strip of wet cardboard in a shootout

That said, clearly Sontaran technology is not only more advanced than human, it’s got a better user interface, too.  Either that, or Steve Jobs has been having a quiet word with Staal on the side.  How else could Martha control NATO’s nuclear launch sequence with her iPhone?  That must be some almighty hack she’s had installed on the thing.  Perhaps it’s a feature in the developers kit that went out recently... Google Maps, Youtube, NATO, iTunes.   I’d like to think the button features a wee mushroom cloud on it.

I’ll admit to allowing myself a wee grin at the line about the Sontaran-Rutan war, if only on the offchance that someone googling the Rutans might stumble across BBV’s website and be tempted to buy my old audio drama, In2Minds.  I believe there are copies still available, and I thoroughly recommend it - the CD makes a perfect coffee mug coaster.

And of course, that wasn’t the only piece of gratuitous continuity shoehorned in there, as we finally got to hear what happened to the Brig.  Although I did rather hope Helen Raynor might try to subvert things a wee bit and have Col. Mace respond that Bambera was stuck in Peru instead. 

I actually liked the Colonel.  I know a lot of people have been dismissive of him, not least on this website.  But you got the sense of a proper military officer trying to keep things under control, and being shown a frankly unnecessary lack of respect by the Doctor.  Even if that kiss at the end was so far beyond stupid, it was in another country.  And an opportunity missed if ever there was one to have him see the two Donna’s and do a double-take...

In fact, it’s stuff like that kiss which has me cringing during Doctor Who.  So many times now have we had to endure moments that leave me contemplating hitting my head off the wall in frustration.  ‘Are you my mummy?’  ‘Now get them out of there!’.  The crap FX shot of the lasers shooting down the corridor at the squaddies.  Rattigan’s footstamping tantrum.  You know the bits I mean.

The producers are trying to restore the clever/dumb balance during the show

It feels as though the producers are looking for a sponsorship deal with Egg.com by trying to restore the clever/dumb balance during the show.  For every wonderful character moment - Martha and her clone's lovely little talk, you-know-who’s cameo, Donna’s bravery, the Doctor throwing the gun away, the Colonel’s Independence Day speech - they have to do something jaw-droppingly bad instead.

And I feel sorry for the people working hard on an episode like that to make it seem superficially good.  Ropey laser guns aside, the FX were by and large lovely to look at.  The direction was reasonable.  The performances were by and large spot-on, and even Freema seemed to improve once she was back to being Martha and not the clone.  Even, for once, the music wasn't too intrusive.  But all those are just fig leaves to cover a story seemingly to be made up on the hoof.

At times with new Doctor Who I wonder if I’m just nitpicking.  If I’m picking up on flaws that the general population is either missing or just doesn’t care about.  After all, with consistently high AIs the show must be doing something right.  But then I sit and watch something like The Poison Sky, where things just happen, for the sake of happening, and think: ‘I don’t care if it’s just me, because ultimately I’m just a viewer, too.  And I’m now not a happy one.’

Genuinely, the only thing really wrong with The Poison Sky was the story, but for a series supposedly driven by story, that's a big thing to get wrong.  Given last week’s flawed but genuinely enjoyable The Sontaran Stratagem, this was a massive letdown.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

As we picked up from last week's conclusion, I suspect Sylvia’s handiwork with the axe was probably a result of several frustrating attempts to get her car repaired at the local Qwik-Fit. The Doctor, flat out like one of their 'quicker than a Qwik-Fit fitter' grease monkeys, and buggering up her exhaust with the sonic screwdriver, obviously does nothing to appease the woman. As she wielded Helen Raynor’s blindingly obvious pay-off to the longeurs of last week’s cliffhanger, I pondered on whether The Poison Sky was on course to crash and burn in the similarly catastrophic fashion of Evolution Of The Daleks. Well, it possibly crashed and it most definitely burned.

As Dolly the sheep… sorry, the evil Martha clone, logged into NATO's mainframe and seized control of every country’s missile launch protocols, I knew we were in trouble. Why would a medical officer be given such sensitive security information? Do UNIT’s cleaners have a direct line to the Valiant on their mobile phones? With her finger on the trigger, Martha’s clone was all narrowing, suspicious eyes and stony-faced looks (so that, yes, we were in no doubt this was the sheep even if we hadn’t spotted the pupils and receeding hairline garbage the Doctor later spouts) and Freema’s best 'clone acting' couldn’t rid me of the feeling that Martha has so far been reduced to nothing more than the ‘tin dog’ this season. Raynor frittered away an opportunity to create some real tension with the audience but instead made the clone boringly traipse around UNIT for a while before trying to redeem a rather useless sub-plot with the more affecting scene of Martha watching her doppleganger bite the dust. It would have been all the more poignant if the clone had actually been more than a throw away plot device that the audience could be bothered about. I think Freema’s been treated worse here than she was in Torchwood and I’m now at a loss as to why Martha was brought back into the series.

Freema’s best 'clone acting' couldn’t rid me of the feeling that Martha has so far been reduced to nothing more than the ‘tin dog’ this season

Kirsty Wark stood in for Andrew Marr on News 24 and Lachele Carl was trotted out yet again as the AMNN news anchor to provide the now rather dull pieces of verisimilitude that pop up in every Earth based adventure. Once upon a time these were fun, playful winks at the audience but now they’re a sad indication that The Poison Sky is simply going to run through all the ‘events on a global scale’ tropes of the new series again and this familiarity is, like the Earth becoming a Sontaran clone world, beginning to breed contempt.

Even the amusing scenes of Donna alone in the TARDIS in the heart of enemy territory had a whiff of Rose’s antics in Army Of Ghosts and reprised the coded message via video link to Mickey in The Age Of Steel  but they succeed by the fact that they show Donna initially rather out of her depth and unsure of herself for a change and then triumphantly trusting in the Doctor’s confidence in her by belting a Sontaran (the ‘back of the neck!’ line being a real highlight of the episode) and fiddling with the teleport to save the day. Catherine Tate continues to shine and for me she makes this weak little exercise all the more bearable.

...when it all went wrong and his Academy cared more about the real world than they did about him all we got was some drippy little tantrum

Luke Rattigan, conversely, was the unbearable git that predictably a sulky child genius aspires to become and, by the time London was fog bound, his little academy of red garbed minions realised he was several sandwiches short of a picnic. And as I surmised, he does have a Robert Klark Graham complex after all by announcing his plan to get all the bright kids to interbreed. So, I’ll give Raynor a couple of points for at least acknowledging that. But Ryan Sampson played him as if he’d overdosed on Smarties and was riding a sugar rush so that when it all went wrong and his Academy cared more about the real world than they did about him all we got was some drippy little tantrum. It’s not effective enough to make us genuinely get any satisfaction out of his eventual, clichéd self-sacrifice and redemption. It’s painfully obvious from the start that Rattigan would come to a noble end but no one liked him and therefore no one gave a shit when he topped himself and saved the day. The Doctor instructs him to do "something intelligent" with his life but then through his own act of sacrifice perhaps he inspires Rattigan to follow his lead. I wasn’t sure whether I liked the Doctor’s methodology there even if Rattigan was a complete pain in the arse.

There were some nice bits of referencing in the middle of this expensive looking, if empty, spectacle. The brief flash of Rose on the TARDIS scanner screen ensured that the impending return of the character was kept simmering away on the back burner; the mention of the 50,000 year war between the Sontarans and the Rutans was welcome and an update on Sir Alistair Lethbridge Stewart (stranded in Peru, apparently) calmed those of us who were desperate for news. His replacement is certainly not very promising. And I’m still trying to decide if the Doctor’s ‘Are you my mummy?’ gag was genuinely funny or just a cheap shot.

Colonel Mace even seemed to get a stiffy with the arrival of that whopping great piece of machine fetish, the Valiant...

Christopher Ryan was another good reason to cut this episode a bit of slack. Staal was a superb character and Ryan did a great job of bringing the pompous little war-monger to life, managing to use the prosthetics and costumes to the benefit of the performance. He’s particularly nasty when he pulls the rug from under an already deflated Rattigan and reduces him to a weeping ninny. Unfortunately, Dan Starkey, as Skorr, wasn’t in the same league and his gap-toothed, child-like ebullience (‘this isn’t war, this is sport!') just didn’t have the gravitas of Ryan’s creation. The battle between UNIT and the Sontaran troops was done well, even if the death of Ross was completely expected (nice bloke and eye candy as ‘casualty of war’ cliché) and rather a waste of a sympathetic character. It did all get a bit gratuitously ‘war porn’ with UNIT finally going in guns blazing and casually mowing down Sontar’s not so finest. Colonel Mace even seemed to get a stiffy with the arrival of that whopping great piece of machine fetish, the Valiant, and even the Doctor got a bit carried away, despite his anti-gun policy, in the midst of such overwhelming machismo. The fetishism of weapons of war ultimately resolved itself into the worryingly phallic looking atmospheric converter that the Doctor rigged up to stick it to the Sontarans. The fact that Rattigan finally got to press the button must say something rather Freudian about the wimp finally getting his mojo back.  The climax to all this was, of course, the necessary big bang that polished off the Sontaran ship courtesy of some satisfying effects work. 

The Doctor fried the gas in the atmosphere in another piece of effects ecstasy and Raynor thinks we’ll happily accept both the rather dreadful blue skies and birds twittering coda to this reckless act and her troweled on anti-car message as Sylvia skips down the road with her shopping. This was as painfully realised as the terror of the sat-nav which she’d rather conveniently ditched at the start of this episode. Give me a break, but that conclusion to a supposed global disaster lacked any kind of integrity.

We’ve seen an awful lot of The Poison Sky before and frankly the majority comes across as lazy recycling of much of the Earth based stories of both the new and old series even if, structurally, Raynor is pretty adept at keeping all the sub-plots going at once and can obviously write witty dialogue and handle characters like Staal. Rather like Murray Gold’s ubiquitously looping music cues, it’s like a greatest hits package where a band has nipped into the studio to record one or two additional tracks just to flog the same old flannel. Actually, I'd like an entirely new album next time please.