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Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

There's a particular brand of Nintendo Logic, prevalent in crappy old 8-bit adventure games, where the Great Hero has to navigate a pathway; you can see where it leads, there's plenty of room to walk around, but you can't proceed until you've solved a puzzle because - oh noes! - there's a stick in your way. Back in the old multi-parter years you could forgive the odd slip with McCoy and his brolly. You grumbled a bit, but grudgingly put up with Colin Baker looking stern-faced eight times out of fourteen. These days we get three cliffhangers a season, tops, if we're lucky. So what on earth is Helen Raynor playing at, building a whole cliffhanger around the same Nintendo Logic principle? "Doctor, help! I'm trapped in a life-threatening situation involving a locked door!"

Imagine how this could have turned out in the hands of Eric Saward in 1984

Sometime since Shakedown, somebody's finally decided to update the Sontaran military handbook so that rule one now reads 'Think Big'. They've never been much for each other's Play-Doh headed company before now, but if you've got a army that churns out hundreds of millions on a conveyer belt, then you'd bloody better use them because a couple of B-list grunts in a golf ball simply doesn't cut it anymore. Why they've set their sights now on Earth instead of Ruta III is no mystery either, if all they've got to show for centuries of conflict with their frigid foes is the ultimate in gazpacho-soup biotechnology. A quick stopover in Paris instead of Seville or New Orleans and they'd at least have some croûtons to go with it.

I'll give the Sontaran strategists this much; they've got taste. The entirety of Earth's radio signals and broadcast transmissions to sift through for vital intelligence, and they zero straight in on their favourite episodes of Columbo. Which is why, two decades after the dregs of the JN-T era when they could have feasibly enlisted a disgruntled Clive Sinclair with the lure of a rampack that doesn't crash when it wobbles (while tactfully neglecting to tell him who's actually been making the BBC Micros to generate those not-so-special effects with), their Earth agent is Alex Brady, the wacko Spielbergish film director from Murder, Smoke And Shadows. Look, it's definitely him - same twisted genius, same cocksure arrogance, same twangy annoying Yankishness. He leaves a Columbo-style paper trail of clues too, since if the factory staff are all under hypnosis, there's no reason to even have a sick-day folder except for interfering busybodies like Donna to find. What, precisely, does our kid believe he's going to get out of all this? "It was never big enough for me." No, well I imagine there wouldn't be much of the Earth left after raping the resources to make 800 million shiny new needlessly-overcomplicated deathmobiles with, not after the Adipose, the Slitheen and those Bane idiots with their genetically-modified Fanta have already had their go.

Hence priority A2 in the UNIT Field Operatives Manual, underneath 'find the cackling woofter in the goatee', is 'investigate faceless corporations staffed by zombies that get rich overnight'. Look, there's another one. The statute's been in place since the 1970s, and compared to this lot, even Global Chemicals and their fruity Wagnerian Vic-20 would slip under the Cardiff radar. Tell the guy in charge of painting UNIT's 'top secret signs', he'll soon get the word out. But those 52 spontaneous deaths? Not to worry, it's only what's left of the Ian Levine forum having a collective aneurysm at the great Orobouros monster that is the UNIT dating controversy continuing to swallow its own tail. So nothing suspicious there.

Hmmm... clone army, high technology, the unearthly knack of flogging tarted-up shit to gullible proles worldwide... has anyone got George Lucas handy on the phone?

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that if Robert Holmes, who created the buggers, couldn't construct a workable original plot out of a shopping list of elements and some bizarre location footage, then poor old Helen Raynor still hasn't got a mission. I was expecting just a load of derivative crap, but at least she has a crack script editor and research team on hand this season to ensure that both UNIT and the Sontarans are handled spot-on, and that her script presses everyone's continuity buttons the right way. Imagine how this could have turned out in the hands of Uncle Tewwance in 1973 or (God forbid) Eric Saward in 1984. As is becoming the norm for this season, the companion and support cast effortlessly carry it all off through honest, down-to-Earth humanity, and look! Hard-edged Martha gets to be a more proactive catalyst - she gets others to react, though her own delivery hasn't gone down so well this week across the blog - than her entire time at Torchwood. As a result it's all huge, jolly and yes, touching fun right up until it goes completely mental at the end, as the Sontaran wave in the terraces chants and throws toilet rolls on the pitch at the halftime score of Killer Cars 400 million, humans nil.

Please can we have a giant radioactive cat to save the day this week?

All Your stormtroopers and your sonics... rubbish!

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

If there's one significant gammy-leg hamstringing The Sontaran Stratagem, the leaden albatross around its neck, if you will, it's Martha Jones. Last year I rather thought that Freema Agyeman was a rather capable actor, despite the fact that the scriptwriting required her to do nothing much beyond pine after the Doctor. My misgivings were stirred up some after her miserable evangelism in The Last of the Time Lords, but, again, I thought incompetent writing was the culprit. Perhaps my judgement during the last series was impaired (by the opiates, no doubt), or perhaps having to appear on three entire episodes of Torchwood sucked away the last of her energy and creativity, because from the moment the cellular rings in the TARDIS Agyeman is, literally, phoning in her performance.

Both the character and the performance in The Sontaran Stratagem are so uninspired that during the scene where Martha is examining the mindless Polish automaton I almost had difficulty telling the two of them apart. From her thoroughly unconvincing argument about "So I've got to work from the inside, and by staying inside maybe I stand a chance of making them better," to the cramp-inducing melodramatics of her discussion about her family with Donna ("I didn't tell my family, kept it all so secret.  it almost destroyed them."), Martha's character is a combination of wide-eyed, stilted emoting and forgettable droning.

Ironically, Agyeman stops sleepwalking through her part only when the real Martha goes to sleep. In addition to cloning Martha and her hair, they apparently cloned some extra personality, as the Evil Martha displays significantly more than the original.

Perhaps another reason that Agyeman fails to even leave much of an impression in The Sontaran Stratagem is that she has to share the episode with the unstoppable dramatic juggernaut that is Catherine Tate.

In what is getting to be disturbingly predictable, I was once again impressed by Tate's performance. Whether in comedic scenes (flying the TARDIS, complete with "denting the eighties" joke) or meatier material, Tate is proving to have the acting chops to pull it out of the fire.  Even the worst of the treacly, tear-jerking bits, such as the scene where Tate returns home, can't keep a good actress down.  Sure, that scene was marred by Murray Gold's aural atrocities and gratuitous use of flashbacks, but you can't blame her for that.

Part of what makes Donna so much more engaging a companion for the Doctor than either Martha or Rose is that she treats him as an equal, rather than gazing at him all glassy-eyed from episode to episode.  A character trait I wish more people had, Donna clearly has no respect for authority. She has no reservations about referring to him as a "prawn" and making him feel like an idiot during the scene when he thinks she's leaving him. Likewise she has no compulsions about standing up to the folks in UNIT, not hesitating to draw comparisons to Guantanamo Bay and demanding a salute from Colonel Mace.

(An Aside: I think the fact that Donna is flying the TARDIS at the beginning of the episode and the seemingly-comical over-sentimentality of her return home could be an indication that The Sontaran Stratagem doesn't follow immediately from Planet of the Ood, and there may be other un-televised "adventures" that took place betwixt the two stories; you'd think she'd have flashbacks about those, too, however.)

With the exception of Jacqueline King's Sylvia Noble, who continues to come off far more as caricature than character, the assorted supporting performers seem to have acquitted themselves quite admirably. The talk over the kitchen table continues to show the good chemistry (and bad music) betwixt Tate and the returning Bernard Cribbins, but of special note are Ryan Sampson as the boy genius and Christopher Ryan as Napoleon. While Sampson's Luke Rattigan initially comes across as sort of a pompous git leading a street gang of maths students in red hoodies, his excitable boyish enthusiasm ("Is he...is he goin' in the water??  I love it with the water!") in the latter half of the program makes him a little more realistic as a teenager.  I also enjoyed the father-son type relationship he has with Staal; the two actors play off of each other well, like in the poignant little scene looking out over the Earth and the exchange about how "cool" it is to kill 52 people in the same second.

My main concern, of course, is that we'll get Rattigan's redemption in part two as he reconsiders his role in the destruction of Earth.  If there's one thing worse than super-genius kids who plots to destroy all of humankind, it's super-genius kids who plots to destroy all of humankind but then doesn't have the spine for it.

While I tend to feel that the entire Stratagem didn't seem particularly, well, Sontaran (though the Doctor notes as much), I was generally pleased with the way they handled the reintroduction of another classic series villain, and I think Ryan's General Staal was spot-on.  His dismissing the Doctor's attempt to sabotage the teleporter as "Primitive sonic trickery!" before fixing it with a zap of his magic wand was sheer brilliance, especially given the endless debates in these parts about how powerful the Sonic Scwoodwivah has become. I even enjoyed the scripts explanation for the probic vents.  In a parallel to his young human charge, Staal seemed almost almost pouty about not being allowed to be a part The Last Great Time War.  The Mill's work with the Sontaran satellite and attack-marbles was also quite excellent, as was much of the design of the Sontarans themselves.  It's more of a testament to Ryan that he managed to give such a good performance through all of that armor and prosthetics.

The dialogue was frequently sparkling, especially in all of the scenes at and near the Academy with the repartee betwixt the Doctor and Staal and Rattigan (and Ross, also: "It's all a bit Hitler Youth.  Exercise at dawn and classes and special diets.")  Ross was easily the best thing about UNIT, though I also sort of enjoyed the back and forth between the Doctor and Colonel Mace about guns and salutes and orders.  Other than that UNIT was pretty much rubbish, Martha included, but even that had a certain Old Skool charm about it.  I still miss when they were more homespun, and there were about six of them.

If I'm looking for another major gripe to make about The Sontaran Stratagem, it would have to be the inappropriately hamfisted music.  I've never been one to harp on about Murray Gold's bludgeoning musical scores, but this episode pushed the bounds of good taste.  The most egregious violation, of course, was during Donna's aforementioned multiple-flashback-laden return home to see her family, but during any of the theoretically-emotional portions of the episode, such as the Doctor's reunion with Martha and her weepy "My family was tortured!" drivel.

I try not to think too much about Helen Raynor's previous contribution to Doctor Who, but I seem to recall that the first half of her last two-parter featuring iconic aliens from the classic series was cracking good stuff, only to be forcibly sodomized by Evolution of the Daleks.  As a result, I'm a little apprehensive about what we can expect from The Poison Sky.  If The Sontaran Stratagem is any indication, Raynor has shown that she can write witty, light-hearted, humourous exchanges, such as the highly-entertaining scenes when the Doctor is dealing with Rattigan and Staal at the Academy.  On the other hand, maybe she'd be better off avoiding anything that rings of the sodden emotional crap that has pretentious miscues such as "He's like fire. Stand too close and people get burned."  I'm also concerned that neither she nor the script editors have considered running their scripts past an average chip-shop employee in order to catch any inaccuracies introduced by their utter lack of understanding of science.  Nonetheless, I'm remaining cautiously optimistic about the upcoming "Part Two", because, in the end, The Sontaran Stratagem was yet another highly entertaining slab of television.

And that's the most frustrating thing of all.  It's much easier to write an entertaining review for the really bad episodes.  In order to make my review interesting I've had to make my own graphics (and no one even noticed it on my Planet of the Ood review), whereas in the past I've mostly gotten away with an endless litany of  snide remarks and bitter scathing attacks about the nonsensical plot, inadequate grasp of basic science, messianic tendencies, poor acting, and general rubbishness of it all.  Is it too late to go back and review those Torchwood episodes?

Vote: The Sontaran Stratagem

Here are the results for the fourth blog poll, for The Sontaran Stratagem:

• 87%: Superb - Spud-u-Like
• 13%: Not Good - Spud-u-Don't

The fifth Doctor Who poll, for The Poison Sky, will be online later tonight following the broadcast of the episode.

He's like fire. Stand too close, and you become chips...

Mmm.... fried Sontarans.

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

Three things needed to happen in order for this episode to impress me. Well, three and a half (kindly imagine the previous sentence as David Tennant would have said it, if you get the idea). Number one: reintroduce the Sontarans as a credible threat in spite of how ridiculous they look. Number two: reintroduce Martha as a credible member of UNIT that allows us to forgive her for her lackluster Torchwood appearance. Number three: reintroduce UNIT as a credible government agency that is separate from Torchwood and not made redundant by it.

Number-Three-and-a-Half, was, of course, a dismissive reference to UNIT dating, which was quite early, quick, marvelously infuriating, and adequately discussed by every one of my more punctual fellow reviewers. It's the other three that are of main importance. And I'm confused. I'm not sure whether I'm satisfied, and so I'm going to have to wait until next time to see whether this story passes or fails, which, I suppose, is my usual attitude toward two-parters. Meanwhile, however, this episode was still a bit of fun, and left me wishing for more. In a one-parter that would be a criticism but here I suppose it's highest praise, isn't it?

I've never really liked the Sontarans as villains. This might have something to do with the fact that prior to this, the only Sontaran story I've even seen was The Two Doctors (see my painfully embarrassing confession in my author bio) and they were of secondary importance in that story, the primary plot of which was the creation of Season 6B. Suffice it to say that Sontarans are not a major part of my Doctor Who fandom and so no amount of potato-flavored nostalgia would save them if this episode didn't make me interested in them. Thankfully, in this area the episode succeeded. True, they were played for laughs, as was inevitable. But I'm now more interested in them as a concept than I ever was before, owing to the two wonderfully played Sontarans. It's mostly Staal that gets the credit, as he is the Sontaran presence in this story and he's by far the best villain we've seen this series (which isn't saying much, as we're only four episodes in and our villains have been a bit dull). In any case, the Sontarans were never the A-listers that RTD and the Radio Times wants us to remember them as, but now they seem poised to take on that position. Meanwhile, the Sontaran's pet genius Rattigan intrigued me but ultimately hasn't delivered yet. He's not the most well-rounded or likable character, but he's a decent complement to the Sontarans and he also serves as a dramatic foil to the Doctor, which is a concept that I hope is followed up on. If his character is handled well in the next episode, then It might almost be enough for me to forgive Helen Raynor for again writing an obnoxious American whose ambition leads him to cast his lot in with the alien invaders. Except Mr. Diagoras never joined in any tribal Dalek dances. And given what dancing is nearly always a direct metaphor for in nu-Who, that's probably for the better. And Katy Manning got there first anyway.

I can't have been the only one who expected Martha to continue, "... and ice, and rage, he's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun," et cetera.

Turning our focus away from fascists both human and potato, this episode carried with it a terrible revelation with regard to Martha: it turns out I like Donna better! If you'd told me I'd feel that way a couple of months ago (hell, a couple of weeks ago), I'd have had a difficult time believing it. But while I quite liked Martha in series three, she gives a rather poor performance here which highlights the few things about her that have annoyed me. And yes, it's been said, but she was given some terrible lines here, particularly when she said "He's like fire." I can't have been the only one who expected her to continue, "... and ice, and rage, he's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun," et cetera, per Family of Blood. Perhaps next week, Freema will have more to do, especially since she'll be playing two versions of herself, but for now I don't exactly find myself regretting her departure last season as much as I did at the time. Of course, she was fine before, and it's probably just the fact that I'm seeing her in an episode where Catherine Tate soars and she just sort of stands there reacting to things. I just hope I won't walk away next week with my good memories of Martha Jones forever tarnished.

UNIT, meanwhile, is brilliant in a hokey, inefficient, bullish sort of way. Even though I can't really wrap my head around how or why Martha is working for them (so the Doctor recommended her for a job in an organization he has such disdain for. Right), they work very well alongside the Sontarans and the Tenth Doctor. As for how UNIT is still useful despite the existence of Torchwood, they established the relationship between the two groups in the best possible way: by completely neglecting to mention Torchwood's existence. A casual, new, viewer doubtless wonders what the difference between UNIT and Torchwood is, and they let UNIT speak for itself. UNIT is a big, blustering military operation. Torchwood is a big, corrupt corporation. Or, if you like, a ragtag group of horny losers in Cardiff. The character of Colonel Mace has a silly name and is almost dryly funny and even likable, if you can get past the fact that he obviously ignored his mother when she told him that if he made funny faces then his face would be stuck that way. But I can't help but feel he's little more than a stand-in for the Brigadier. It would be good to get Nicholas Courtney in while he's still interested. And alive.

For those keeping score at home, that means this episode was two for three (ish), but I'm not entirely sure whether it was helped or hurt by David Tennant's performance. I've heard it characterized as both insane and bored. Or, to combine the two thoughts, he's channeling Tom Baker. I think there was often a sort of bored intensity to Tom's performance (if that makes sense) and David has brought a bit of this to his portrayal of the Doctor. It's evident in the way he pops "in tru da window" to check on the Sontarans and immediately pops out to taunt the Sontaran by mockingly telling him to die with dignity. It's evident in his almost-condescending friendliness to his assigned (and armed) UNIT grunt, who occasionally looks like he's about to break into tears from the merciless teasing. "He called you a grunt! Don't call Ross a grunt! He's nice! We like Ross!" It's evident in how he blatantly recycles the tired old "I know your name, how could I know that? Keep me alive!" argument. He's given some good lines, but this is like nothing we've ever seen from the Tenth Doctor. This Doctor is bored, crazy, and just plain spiteful toward the Sontarans. Like I said earlier, I'm going to have to see the second half of the episode before I pass judgment on Tennant's performance here, because it's either brilliant or terrible. Or, you know, somewhere in between.

Donna, meanwhile, has my unambiguous approval as I mentioned earlier. In my review for Planet of the Ood, I feared that Donna was becoming a one-note character who does little more than criticize the Doctor's moral failings. Well, she's still doing that ("Is that what you did to her? Turned her into a soldier?"), but she's also doing much more in this episode. Her ability to ask the questions nobody else would think to ask (the sick day file) and make the comparisons nobody else will dare to make (Guantanamo Bay), the writers are continuing the moral theme of the character while keeping her useful, entertaining and likable. The moment between her and the Doctor where he thinks she's leaving him is one of the best moments of series four so far. And the moments with her family are wonderful, although it's sad to see that her granddad is trapped in a lame cliffhanger.

And what a lame cliffhanger it was! Not only was it poorly shot, but it was poorly thought out (can they really not get Bernard Cribbins out of that car?) and it's destined to be wrapped up poorly. We'll suddenly find out next episode that the gas is not a deadly toxin, but something far worse: the glorious fanfare of the returning Slitheen. Or maybe it's gratuitous use of a fog machine. Only the next episode will reveal the truth, and hopefully in doing so it will rectify the flaws of this two-parter and make it into the classic that it's trying to be.

Giving Sontarans Silly Things To Do

What is it with Sontarans and their thorax obsession? They manage to shoe horn it into every single conversation when they're with, in the proximity of, or absolutely no where near human females. They're always yammering on about it, in The Time Warrior, in Mindgame Trilogy, in Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans (the latter I accidentally watched instead of the real return of the Sontarans and remain in total hysterics at the voice one of their number puts on which sounds a lot like the grotesquely disfigured and partially mechanised Harry from Nebulous impersonating the League of Gentleman's serial auditioner Pamela Doove - "Unlike you, Professor, I no longer have a working thorax" etc...).

The Thorax Monologues - a dizzyingly pointlessly, CGI heavy, DVD extra.

Have the Sontarans, at some point, digested a badly written species primer on humans and think that the very definition of charm is to draw attention to a woman's thorax? One mention of it and they're putty in your pudgy three fingered palm. I wouldn't be that surprised if there was a dizzyingly pointlessly CGI heavy extra on the forthcoming Sontaran box set, called The Thorax Monologues, where three aged comediennes take it in turns to talk about their thorax - in an hallucinogenic computer-recreated set of the Magpie studios - ejected from the right nostril of a gigantic spinning head - in an explosion that looks worst than one from 1973. Probably.

Just don't, what ever you do, take a Sontaran on a stag trip to Bangkok, they'd be totally befuddled.

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

Well, they're back. I mean really back. Not pitching up in some 90's fan video or advertising Cup-a-Soups on the tele, and they're knocking out stuff from an Innovations catalogue. Following on from extensive work in The Sontaran Experiment, where humans near total inability to read maps was violently and graphically tested (at least in the novelisation it was), they followed that up with the triple synergistic approach of the The Sontaran Focus Group and The Sontaran Consumer Acceptance Testing before The Sontaran Market Penetration Team swung into action and out farted the ATMOS device. At least we now know how the Sontaran military machine funds itself: knockout motoring accessories and flog them wholesale to gullible proles regardless of their thorax construction. They could further bolster their coffers by offering pairs of furry Rutans to adorn rear view mirrors, a series of humorous sentiments captured in bumper sticker form (including My Other Car's An Inferno Class Battle Cruiser and the Judoon favourite Honk If You're Horny) and cup holders big enough to accommodate a bargain bucket of fried turtle necks and filleted sheep bladders to the disgusting masses.

From The Worzels to The Wire.

It's unclear how they managed to snare a child genius to assist them with their dastardly plans. Perhaps he was hooked in via the Junior Innovations catalogue (or the Bazooka Joe Prize Catalogue). Perhaps they streamed straight into his brain a Saturday morning cartoon rip-off of Dastardly and Mutley in Their Flying Machines where a gang of grotesques attempt to "Stop That Rutan". Or perhaps they just followed the time honoured tradition of the Nigerian scam email device to hookwink the closest bibbling imbecile:- wealthy illegal alien requires help in moving millions of dollars from his homeland promises a hefty reward in return for assistance. Probably described himself as a member of a military service to add a certain level of respectability to the message. Just not which military service. And who did they find to fill this roll - non other than a precocious little talent who's accent shifts from The Worzels to The Wire. Just listen to him when he says "Suppose you're the Doctor". Can't you almost taste that blade of grass you're chewing on and the cider you've just polished off?

Serving trough of egg rolls at an all you can eat Chinese buffet.

And Martha. What of poor Martha? Last seen with tread marks all over her as she ran headlong into someone else's story arc. Perhaps it was as a direct result of her Torchwood stint that they decided to give her more screen time with an evil twin, to make up for all that character development she missed out on due to Owen sulking about impersonating maggot food. Also, how many false alarms have their been when she almost recalled the Doctor only to find out at the last moment that there wasn't any alien activity. And why didn't she pick up the phone when Buckingham Palace was almost pureed by a Douglas Adams computer game? Or when the planet was being buzzed by Steve Speilberg space craft hoovering fat creatures up like John Prescott attacking a serving trough of egg rolls at an all you can eat Chinese buffet? Surely either occurrence would merit a call more than a company banging out satnav devices? If this is the level of paranoia that exists then surely those Innovations catalogue people would have been first into the newly founded UNIT water-boarding theme park.

A five-year-old spurting random words through a mouth full of Lego bricks.

The poor love. She's obviously been all of a tiz working on that first line to think straight. That magical first killer line she'd use when eventually calling the Doctor. And what comes out? "Doc-ta. It's Mar-fa. And I'm bringing you back to Earth."  Back to Earth? Apart from sounding a little bit odd (...back down to Earth, anyone?) hasn't she forgotten that he's usually to be found on Earth? Contemporary Earth at that. Never mind an interstellar, pan-dimensional phone call - a sodding second class stamp would probably have done the trick. And you'd have been able to compose something that didn't come out sounding like a five-year-old spurting random words through a mouth full of Lego bricks.

That is if you hadn't just used that last second class stamp to send off for an Innovations catalogue electric goat filleting machine...

Sex Lives of the Potato Men

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

I’m starting to wonder if, a bit like this big squishy sofa we’re all hiding behind, Doctor Who is destined always to revert to its original shape.

In the early days of the revival, Russell T Davies went out of his way to impress upon us how shiny and new and modern this all was – so Gallifrey, RP accents and cravats were out; texting, Il Divo and Tina the Cleaner were in.

But much of what we’ve seen in series four so far wouldn’t have felt that out of place among the Doctor Who of 1970 (or, indeed, 1988). Except with one, crucial difference: It’s really, genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny.

The Pertwee era’s idea of comedy was having a local yokel scratching his head and resolving to stay off the booze in a Mummerset accent. Today, we have non-exploding jeeps, comic monologues about petrol station pork pies and Catherine Tate calling the Doctor a prawn. This, I hope you’ll agree, is what we call Progress.

The other big difference, of course, (and you’ll forgive me gushing like an RTD Confidential soundbite here) is that today we are blessed with the finest leading man on television. Tom Baker once memorably described Jon Pertwee as being like “a tall light bulb” but, in reality, that dusty old stiffshirt would have struggled to illuminate a broom cupboard. David Tennant, by contrast, is a lightning rod of fizzing energy, turning on a sixpence between breezy bonhomie (“Don’t call Ross a grunt, he’s nice, we like Ross”), excitable boy scout (“Is it PE? I wouldn’t mind a kickabout, I’ve got me dabs on!”) and battle-weary Lonely Angel. (And yes, I know Tachyon TV has been Proudly Squee-free Since 2001, but it doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves what a good thing we’re onto occasionally.)

Let’s face it, the omens for The Sontaran Stratagem weren’t good - Helen “I’m not a scientist,but...” Raynor, blue plastic Sontarans, the return of UNIT and the fact that the early season action double bills are always, always rubbish conspiring to not so much dampen expectation as piss right in its face. But – proving that life, unlike EastEnders, is rarely predictable – I absolutely loved it.

From the perfectly-formed pre-title teaser to the audacious Sontaran haka, there’s nothing about this episode that would have dissuaded Ricky Gervais from his view that Doctor Who is “frothy nonsense” – but surely even that inveterate snob  would have to concede it was frothy nonsense of a gloriously superior stripe.

Certain members of the Ming Mong fraternity no doubt found the treatment of the Sontarans lacking in due reverence, but I thought the script struck a perfect balance between slyly building on their mythology while not being afraid to poke them in the eye occasionally. After 35 years, it was refreshing to hear someone finally acknowledge the baked potato in the room, and turning the always nigglesome issue of the probic vent into a positive attribute (“We stare into the face of death”) was a neat twist.

Chris Ryan’s  General Staal was another example of the show’s increasing confidence in embracing the tropes of the past – I can’t image a series one Big Bad being allowed to get away with talking in such Classic Monster tones, rrrrolling rrrrs and all – and dialogue like “Words are the weapons of womenfolk” wouldn’t have disgraced Robert Holmes’ original toadface himself. Are we to infer from this, incidentally, that there are female Sontarans? And what role do they play, exactly, in a clone race that’s grown in the bath? (It’s no wonder they’re such a belligerent lot – they’re clearly getting even less than the Doctor.)

The episode also had a genuine sense of momentum, not least in the way it kept the Doctor on the move (TARDIS-factory-jeep-Rattigan Academy-jeep-Donna’s street) - a welcome change of pace after last week’s runaround in a factory and four square inches of quarry.

And it was nice to see Martha’s back… sorry, Martha back (though the scene in the gloop was as tentatively erotic as Doctor Who ever gets – squee with added squelch, if you will) - it was just ironic she returned in a story in which Donna really came into her own.

I’ll admit I was a fully paid-up member of The Tate Sceptics (we’re a bit like The Tate Cynics, only slightly more open to suggestion) but, here, she brought a genuine new dimension to the show’s dynamic, just like that nice Mr Russell promised she would. Donna also brings with her the most satisfying family baggage of the three new series companions so far – you gotta love Bernard Cribbins, trapped in a car full of poison gas jabbering “It’s them aliens!” while Jacqueline King’s lovely little monologue shows Helen Raynor has been studying RTD’s Big Gay Book of Comic Matriarchs very closely indeed.

Of course, this being big, dumb old Doctor Who, there was also much about The Sontaran Stratagem that was Too Stupid For Words.

It was particularly sobering to see The Last of the Time Lords, the man who led the battle in the last great Time War and saw a hundred thousand ships burning in the sky (or something), defeated by a car window any scally with a brick or a bit of coathanger could have sorted out in seconds flat. And UNIT, gratifyingly, remain the world’s least convincing military black ops outfit. All their troops looked about 12, and the two saps dispatched to check out the cellar were screaming for back up when all they’d seen was a room with a big box in it – it could have been a sunbed for all they knew. (Also, one of them was called Steve, which is an absolutely impossible name to say convincingly in any dramatic context – go on, try saying “Come on, Steve!” with any sense of urgency and you’ll see what I mean.)

But even this was fun in a nostalgic sort of way. And Operation Blue Sky (damn RTD and his ELO Agenda!) did present the opportunity for some cheeky satire about everything from Guantanamo Bay to the exploitation of East European migrant workers (not bad for a show that could easily have been called Attack of the Killer Potatoes).

Oh, and for the ultimate proof that Russell the T is lightening up and embracing his inner fanboy, we got a UNIT dating joke that would have brought a smile to the faces of literally hundreds of viewers. It would never have happened in Christopher Eccleston’s day, you know.

The Cars That Ate Powys

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

Finally, they're back!

Ugly, brutish and thick, they take militarism and macho posturing to dizzying new heights. Cheer as they stomp about in their redesigned uniforms! Boo as they wave their weapons in the faces of innocent bystanders! Swoon as the Doctor runs rings around them! Gasp as they bring planet earth to the brink of disaster!

Welcome back, UNIT, it's been a long time.

They may be a little less homespun these days, but UNIT still display the very same xenophobic incompetence that we've all come to know, love and expect. From the moment they frog-marched en masse back onto our screens like a herd of baby elephants, forgoing a surreptitious recce in favour of some good old fashioned jackbooted grandstanding, UNIT hardly put a foot right. And I loved it; it just wouldn't have been the same if they'd somehow got their act together in the intervening years. They even managed to make Torchwood look co-ordinated.

When UNIT finally take control of the factory of evil they send their cockiest private (marvel at his arrogant swagger!) down into the bowels of the complex, where he and his panicky mate start mucking around with alien technology that they can't possibly comprehend. Just what are UNIT teaching these idiots in basic training? Obviously it's the very same nonsense they doled out back in the 70s (or was it the 80s?). Observe how Privates Gray and Harris react when they encounter an alien species - they mercilessly take the piss out of it! They must have at least suspected that it was an alien creature, they work for UNIT after all, not a crack squad sent in to disrupt children's fancy dress parties, and they've just been flummoxed by a weird (and thoroughly disturbing) inhuman clone, so what the hell were they thinking?

Colonel Mace is so wet he makes Sgt. Benton look like Errol Flynn...

God help them if this had been a peaceful first contact situation - they might have started an interstellar war. But it's hardly surprising when you look at the doofus that's leading this motley crew: it's one of the Double-Take Brothers from The Harry Enfield Show! Such gravitas! Such presence! Such a funny mouth. At least Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart looked as if he meant business, even in his more ridiculous moments (cf. confusing Cromer with chroma key), whereas Colonel Mace is so wet he makes Sgt. Benton look like Errol Flynn.

This incarnation of UNIT don't even operate on a 24-hour basis. When that poor journalist with the funny name tried to spill the beans about ATMOS she was put through to an answer phone. What happens if the Slitheen attempt to invade the Home Counties after 5:30pm? We'd be f**ked!

But the definitive proof that a 21st century UNIT can change it's acronym but it can't change its spots is encapsulated by that pitiful image of a poor grunt trying to shoot a catalytic converter off the back of a jeep at point blank range.

And missing.

So, that's UNIT back to basics, what about the Sontarans?

Christopher Ryan was an absolute hoot as General Staal. As much as I adore Linx and Styre, this articulation of the turd-heads (an insult that will be saved for Torchwood, I guess) took the much maligned B-division baddies and it gave them some teeth (literally). I don't think I've ever seen a villain enjoy himself quite as much as Staal does as he prepares to unleash murder and mayhem on an unsuspecting populace, even if his plans do feel familiarly preposterous. His witty repartee with the dim-witted soldiers was a joy to behold and my favourite moment of this season so far has to be Staal's semi-surprised stagger as the Doctor temporarily disables his transmat beam. And while it's becoming increasingly difficult not to imagine him roaring "You did it beautifully, Tubbs!", it's hard not to love him. And full-marks to the production team for giving us a ruthless warlike race that mills around in what looks suspiciously like a pink-themed nightclub. Now that's what I call cultural relativism.

I'm happy to report that Tennant thrilled me this week. His visit to the Rattigan Academy was simply delightful, and at one point he successfully channeled Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy at the same time! If that doesn't deserve a Cymru BAFTA, nothing does. His verbal sparring with Luke (a genuinely frightening child prodigy) was inspired and his disarming treatment of Staal evoked such warm memories from my childhood, I almost cried.

I'm surprised they didn't chuck in a clip of Donna meeting Martha from a couple of minutes ago...

However, as much as I enjoyed The Sontaran Stratagem, it isn't perfect by any means. Donna's flashbacks were so flagrantly self-indulgent I'm surprised that they didn't go the whole hog by chucking in a clip of her meeting Martha from a couple of minutes ago; Tennant's air-sucking shenanigans almost sabotaged the UNIT-dating joke; the Sontarans chanting was bizarre (try to imagine the Daleks screaming 'Here We Go! Here We Go! Here We Go!' as they enter battle); and the fake farewell between Donna and the Doctor was contrived beyond belief, although Catherine Tate continues to impress the hell out of me.  She's helped by a strangely subdued return for Martha Jones who never really gets going, although I'm guessing she'll come to the fore as the evil doppleganger next week.

But what's really did my nut in was the shameful way in which the Doctor was symbolically castrated by yet another deadlock. In the 70s we got Tom Baker staring wildly at the audience before proclaiming, "even the sonic screwdriver won't get me out of this one!" but now we have to suffer the ignomy of those bloody deadlocks instead. If the sonic is a lazy get-out-of-jail card for the Doctor, then the deadlock is an even lazier get-out-of-jail card for the scriptwriter.

And everyone is at it, even shitty old cars are double-deadlocked. Does this mean that bricks will simply bounce off the windows? I bloody hope so, because if they don't the Sontarans plan is seriously flawed. Assuming anyone bothers to try, of course...

Next Week: it's Kirsty Wark's turn to sacrifice credibility for verisimilitude.

Potato Crisp

Doctor Who:  The Sontaran Stratagem

Well, that about wraps it up for what the Wikipedia gamefully describes as the UNIT dating controversy (controversy?!?  It's hardly the Kennedy assassination, which as we know was carried out by young Kiwi tabloid journalist James Stevens).  If the Doctor says they happened "in the Seventies...or was it the Eighties?" that's good enough for me, because actually they did happen in the Seventies and the Eighties and so along with Sarah-Jane’s recently revealed date of birth, our lords Lance and Lars can quite happily publish another edition of Ahistory integrating that sticky special UNIT section into the main text.  Pheeuw.  Glad that’s sorted out, because really in relation to inflating the importance of the unimportant that’s the big one.  Now if only someone would admit that C-19 is a code number for Torchwood, everything will be hunky-dory.  Except that wouldn’t be so much a kiss to the past as a full on shag.

What a stonking episode!  This was clearly Helen Raynor’s best ever script, perfectly paced, with all of the problems of Daleks Take, sorry In Manhattan cleared up.  That episode didn’t gel because the audience were too far ahead of the Doctor – we already knew it was the Daleks and had an inclining about what they were up to and essentially watched the timelord spending forty-five minutes getting up to speed.  This episode worked as a proper detective story, as the Doctor stumbled into the Sontaran’s ship refreshingly early which meant that the mystery rightly became what their stratagem was for him and us.  And no visible goal posts.

Now if only someone would admit that C-19 is a code number for Torchwood, everything will be hunky-dory.

If said stratagem wasn't entirely original – it’s another alien something pretending to be an ordinary something which has invaded the ordinary lives of the ordinary population – it did lead to a half decent if over extended cliffhanger which can’t be dealt with too quickly presumably.  Unless the Doctor suddenly reveals that his lungs are bigger on the inside and he breaths in all the gas – or he turns the Tardis into a catalytic converter or something.  It’s worth adding to the chorus of hackles which suggest granddad could be saved with a well aimed brick, but for that matter, was the lock on the car door deadlock sealed, or is it a dodgy Watchdog-bating make of car which can’t be opened using sonic devices?

There aren’t many other series that would run the alien invasion, evil twin and boy genius stories together in the same episode and unlike, say New Earth, which also attempted a similar conflation of ideas (evil medicine, mind swap) it actually worked because none of them seemed randomly placed and all were logically connected.  Into the mix there’s the companion’s return home, the revisit of a recent in the memory companion (which is something the television series has never done) and the already mentioned venerable organisation.  All in forty-four minutes.  With this much creativity, it's almost as though someone's been snorting the Ritalin, Elizabeth Wurtzel-style.  I’m surprised there weren’t clowns as well.

Has someone been snorting the Ritalin, Elizabeth Wurtzel-style.

Instead we had the Sontarans back and probably the best they’ve ever been.  It’s an interesting new strategy, reinventing one of the ‘classic’ alien races by doing nothing to them other than designing and producing some decent prosthetics so that the person behind the mask has more than his lips and voice to act with (Christopher Ryan stonking and stomping performance was perhaps the best we’ve seen from a long line of men to assume the potato head) and giving them some decent characterisation.  The key, as writer Raynor says in her commentary, was to acknowledge they had ‘small man syndrome’ and run with it.  So we’re making fun of them rather a lot, but also introducing some pathos in that they’re built for war but weren’t actually ‘allowed’ the participate in the big one.

Raynor wasn’t afraid to mess about with some of the tropes of the new series, particularly in relation to the Doctor.  That scene in which he got the wrong end of a very big stick about Donna’s trip home was a perfect antidote to similar slightly forced scenes and the expectation of a massive explosion from a jeep with the accompanied by the launch at the floor followed by a pfft from the sat-nav may well have been one of the funniest moment this series.  You could argue that the timelord’s visit to Rattigan saw Tennant channeling the favourite Baker, but the character is at his best when we can see that he’s the sum of his parts and would the Fourth Doctor have been so bold as to take down a Sontaran using a shuttlecock?

I hear she’s always been scorching on stage

Catherine continues to provide a multi-dimensional performance.  By now, all of the apparent baggage has melted away and I actually think she’s giving the best filmed performance we’ve ever seen from her (I hear she’s always been scorching on stage).  She was about the best thing about Planet of the Ood and it’s a testament to what she’s doing that the trip home feels so fresh even though it’s a scene we’ve seen at least twice since the show returned from its multi-medium sabbatical.  The chemistry with Bernard Cribbins is divine and you can believe that they’re relatives enjoying their giddy secret about who the Doctor is and were she’s been. 

Whilst we're here, might as well note that Donna was as the epicentre of the arc-clue additions.  The Doctor mentioned the Medusa cascade during his thank you speech, but also more curiously registered an interesting kind of surprise as Donna piloted the Tardis.  It wasn’t so much what he said, that he couldn’t believe she was working the controls, as to how he said it, as though she, in truth, shouldn’t have that kind of knowledge.  Connected with whatever’s supposed to be on her back, perhaps?  I really hope that it’s not revealed that she’s under some kind of alien influence or been lying all of this time about who she actually is, Turlough with a double X chromosome, a tool of The Trickster or whatever.

Turlough with a double X chromosome 

Martha’s back too of course, her eyes still sparking.  Freema’s received some rather mean spirited notices for this episode, but I really can’t see what the problem is.  She’s as good as she’s ever been, it’s just the character thats changed.  Like Sarah-Jane, we’re watching an ex-companion dealing with the after-Tardis-life and this is a perfectly logical extension – she’s become a scientific adviser, a professional albeit with less authority than the Doctor.  The potential misstep of having the character tied down and being experimented on again was nicely twinkled with the introduction of evil Martha, a figure who offers some of us the perfect opportunity to nip over to the dark side (or the bathroom).  Again.  And again.

We’ll hopefully see more of UNIT in action next week, five rounds rapid and all that.  It was very strange not to see The Brigadier in there somewhere, but it’s clearly a case of trying to strike a balance between the old and new elements and with everything else going on, to have yet another returning character would have been messy – and it wouldn’t have been fair to bring back such an icon simply for a cameo.  In any case, according to the good book, he's still retired in 2009 when this episode is set.  It is a shame that Bessie couldn’t have been dragged in from whichever Doctor Who exhibition she's currently parked in, with a nice ‘WHO 10’ already attached to the front.  But for story reasons, the Doctor had to be stuck in a jeep with a satnav so it kind of makes sense, and the interplay with young Ross Jenkins just about recalled similar scenes between the Third and Alistair.

My first episode reviews always turn into a few random thoughts and that’s largely because they're essentially giving half an opinion.  The first three episode of The Twin Dilemma are just rubbish, but the final part has that powerful scene between Colin and his mentor which dwarfs his entire era in terms of its emotional reality (honestly).  Which goes to show you never can what will come next.  On this occasion, I’m very optimistic that The Poison Sky will be as good as this.  The Sontaran Stratagem I mean.  Not The Twin Dilemma.   I'd hate to think Luke's got a sibling.  He was about the only real disappointment, a mirror universe edition of Wesley Crusher selling his own people out to the Whoniverse's own Klingons, Ryan Sampson’s sometimes pleasingly arch portrayal undermined by a slightly wayward accent.  Exactly why is he supposed to be American though? Are we suddenly trying to offer payback for the well-worn Hollywood villainy shorthand?

Next week:  I go blind and Terrance Dicks receives a royalty cheque as we’re given a status report on the Sontaran’s battle with the Rutans.

How to fix the Sontarans

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

Timing is everything.  Comedy, drama, coincidence and chance all rely on perfect timing.  The Sontaran Stratagem's timing couldn’t have been more unfortunately perfect if it tried.  A story about using cars as weapons, airing on a day when the Grangemouth refinery is closed down due to strike action and the nation is warned of a potential fuel crisis. 

It rather makes David Tennant’s line about the converters using up all the oil quicker by encouraging more motorists out onto the roads seem perfectly chosen, anyway.

But then, in a way it’s appropriate.  The UNIT stories of the 70s aired to a country of strikes and energy shortages, incidents that coloured the show’s storylines for almost the entire Pertwee era.  Thirty five years on, and while the technobabble may be more advanced, the situation isn’t.

And wasn’t it great to see that, after all this time, with their new shiny black combat suits, their red berets, advanced automatic weapons and massed legions of troops, that the fighting men and women of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce can’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo at two paces?  Did you see that squaddie trying to hit the poison gas emitter on the exhaust pipe?  I’m a better shot than that, and I’m barely able to complete Call of Duty 4 on easy mode.  Although, given UNIT's apparent shoot to kill policy is still in effect, it’s just as well, really.

In many ways, this episode felt like a throwback, and I don’t just mean because of the presence of UNIT and the Sontarans.  Donna’s return home to see the folks aside, so much of this felt like your typical old-school episode of Doctor Who.  There was something reassuringly retro about it all - the direction, the pacing, the concepts behind it, and done in an affectionate way, rather than a tiresome Saward-esque greatest hits package.  Even the dialogue seemed littered with nods to the show’s history - the zapped private echoing Ian’s “I can’t feel my legs”.

Actually, the dialogue was one fo the best things in this.  Now that the writers (well, specifically every writer except Russell T Davies) have started writing Donna as a character in her own right rather than an extension of Catherine Tate’s sketch show, Tate’s performances have grown in confidence and stature, and Helen Raynor served her particularly well.  Her hitting the personnel files with a temp’s eye for office management was a nice touch, befitting the character and giving her a small but important role in advancing the plot amid all the technobabble and soldiery.   

Her by-play with the Doctor is fun to watch too - this screwball comedy vibe that kept being mentioned in all the press gubbins when Tate was cast is now becoming evident in the best possible ways.  Anyone who saw Tate and Tennant last year at the recording of Chain Reaction knows how well they spark off each other and we’re now seeing the best of that on screen.

Tennant, too, was on particularly good form in The Sontaran Stratagem, with the most Doctorish of his performances so far.  And by Doctorish, I mean you believe in the authority, the knowledge and energy of him rather than just lifting character traits from his predecessors.

That said, there were times when he seemed to be channelling Tom Baker during proceedings - nowhere more so than when confronting the Generic Evil Teen Genius.  Sympathising with Rattigan yet putting him in his place, correcting poor grammar, and KOing a Sontaran with a squash ball... transplant all that to late Hinchcliffe/early Williams era and it’d have passed without a blink from the audience.

Freema was less impressive though.  In fact, this performance wasn’t so much phoned in as sent on a time-delayed e-mail while she was on her holidays.  Three episodes of Torchwood seem to have knocked the stuffing from her as an actress - not exactly surprising - and she’s got one of the charm or feisty appeal of last year.  Hopefully it’s a temporary aberration - seeing Martha return was one of the things that I looked forward to going into The Sontaran Stratagem, yet it turned out to be one of the least memorable aspects.

Sontarans were never a-listers. - they weren’t the ones you’d stick front row for An Audience with Doctor Who

The Sontarans were far more memorable even if, by their return, we’re starting to scrape well into the b-list of classic series monsters.  I mean, the Macra were fair enough in Gridlock - even most of the mums and dads watching with their kids won’t have remembered them.  But the Sontarans were never a-listers. They weren’t the ones you’d stick front row for An Audience with Doctor Who.  They were the ones you shove half way up the seating, sitting with the Monk and the folk who won their tickets in a TV Times competition.

But here, in their reworked, fun-sized version, they felt fresh and interesting again - especially when you consider what they were like last time we saw them.  Christopher Ryan as Mike the Cool Sontaran was a measured performance in alien menace and I’m desperately hoping for a face-off between him and Col. Mace next time out.  Not sure about the redesigned body armour though.  Less a baked spud in tinfoil and more a miniature version of Boba Fett.  Or Baby Fett, as it’d be in this case.

For all that retro feel to the episode, that cliffhanger was weak - it just cried out for a close-up of the Doctor among all the poison gas, looking round desperately, as the music crashed in.  Few of the two-parters have got that midpoint cliffhanger right, even after ten attempts.  And there was just one too many coincidences in the story - the entire Noble/Mott family having remembering their encounters with the Doctor one by one, the satnavs not being removed from every government vehicle the moment the company were under investigation.  But then, as I said earlier, coincidence is all a matter of timing - in this case, fitting everything important into 44 minutes...

Oh, and I’ll ignore the music - not easy without earplugs, mind you - after Murray went all the way up to about 20 when Donna was walking home.  Once again, a soundtrack that comes with a noise abatement order.

But by and large, The Sontaran Stratagem was a fun and likeable addition to what has been an ever-improving season of Doctor Who. Given what a pig's ear (all puns aside) Helen Raynor made of last year's returning monster two-parter, the tedious Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks double feature, here she managed to pull off something I thought impossible to now - fix the Sontarans.

Your Final Homespun Destination

Doctor Who: The Sontaran Stratagem

You know, I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I'm sure those Sontarans put the mockers on my viewing of this episode. The Sky box crashed after failing to record the episode tonight. When satellite boxes fail I'd definitely class myself as one of the many Britons who have a prevailing pessimistic disposition towards technology. And Doctor Who has always enjoyed fuelling this disillusionment with its own take on the perils of new technologies and the fear of new ideas. Just look at what the new series has already managed to blemish; mobile phone networks, bluetooth attachments, power stations, computers; and now the much maligned Sat-Nav, the evils of cloning and catalytic converters.

Luke Rattigan, an unfortunate 'boy genius' SF cliche, is someone we should be scared of.

In fact, The Sontaran Stratagem is honestly so in love with the relative merits, both good and bad, of new technology its like it's taken it out on a date and then thrown a drink over its head for not getting down on one knee to propose. Here, we are talking about technological might and the abuses of power and how innovations can offer individuals considerable influence in the course of human affairs. The Rattigan Academy, with Ryan Sampson's Luke Rattigan coming on all Bill Gates to a bunch of red robed genius kids, is pretty much about how technology develops autonomously. It feeds on itself and becomes irresistible to consumers who simply don't consider the responsibility that goes hand in hand with new developments. Luke Rattigan, an unfortunate 'boy genius' SF cliche, is someone we should be scared of.  He's essentially practicising a form of eugenics and his Academy is pure Robert Klark Graham, the American millionaire who tried to collect sperm from Nobel laureates and breed an entire generation of geniuses, and that other pariah William Shockley, a giant of Silicon Valley and one of Graham's 'offspring'.  Trouble is, Ryan Sampson plays it just like so many other cliched child geniuses in film and television (yes, I'm looking at you Sarah Jane Adventures) and Helen Raynor's writing doesn't even begin to barely address these ideas that it seems such a wasted opportunity.

That's the problem with these two-parters though. They are murder to write. It's difficult to pull off the necessary action, spectacle, subtexts and character development especially when most of the formula here is already feeling a tad stale. We've had the companion returning home in Aliens Of London and TheLazarus Experiment , we've had the phobias about technology and we've had alien invasions galore so this does feel like a retread. The plus here is that we do get the 'evil doppelganger' of Martha and that's a new one for the series. It's perfectly enjoyable for 45 minutes and a good, pacy set-up for the second part. There are some very delightful and well written scenes - Donna having a go at flying the TARDIS and 'denting the 1980s', which this story literally does in its retro Pertwee UNIT vibe and Saward like obsession with the military; the faux 'I'm going home' exchange between her and the Doctor which is one of the best played scenes from Tate and Tennant; and the whole reunion with Wilf and Sylvia which again relies on some affecting interplay between Tate and the wonderful Bernard Cribbins and would have been even better if they'd decided not to treat the audience like imbeciles and flashed us back through Donna's Greatest Hits. Tate's playing of Donna gets better with each episode and I really loved the warmth between her and Tennant. Freema is not as good as she was in Torchwood's Reset and this confident and strident version of Martha suffers slightly with some poor line delivery but it is still good to see her back in the series and the sub-plot of her cloning will hopefully give her an opportunity to stretch her acting muscles.

...he corrects Rattigan's grammar and wields a squash racket to whallop Staal's probic vent 

Tennant is much better in this story, almost teetering into the manic performances of his early episodes, and his barbed attitude towards Colonel Mace (Rupert Holliday-Evans is a poor man's Brigadier, it has to be said) and UNIT's emergence from its 'homespun' origins and the later rather smashing scene where he corrects Rattigan's grammar and wields a squash racket to whallop Staal's probic vent (shades of the satsuma bowling in The Christmas Invasion) finally prove that he isn't on auto-pilot this series. The script is littered with funny lines and good character moments for the Doctor, Donna and Martha but it doesn't serve the other human characters that well. Plenty of continuity references too and perhaps a cheeky answer to that thorny question of dating the UNIT stories with that "Back in the seventies. Or was it the eighties? It was all a bit more . . . homespun back then" line and more mentions of the Time War and the Medusa Cascade. Personally, I feel that the 'homespun' UNIT of Lethbridge-Stewart, Benton and Yates is in no danger of being eclipsed by Mace and his rather anodyne sidekicks of Ross, Gray and Harris, especially with their 'Homeworld Security' agenda of roughing up Polish factory workers, much to Donna's chagrin. It's a Bush 'New World Order' version of UNIT already hinted at in Torchwood and if they carry on like this I suspect the Doctor will resign his position.

...it's safe to say that the school playgrounds of Britain will soon be ringing with Sontaran chants.

However, Helen Raynor does triumphantly reposition the Sontarans rightfully amongst the best of the returning classic series monsters. She manages to create a memorable foe in General Staal and feeds him with the kind of dialogue we haven't heard Sontarans utter since The Time Warrior or The Sontaran Experiment. Christopher Ryan seizes the opportunity and makes Staal into a wonderfully erudite, bombastic military leader completely fixated on war. And the redesign of the costumes and prosthetics does work effectively to enhance Ryan's performance and obliterates the rather feeble efforts of The Two Doctors. Couple that with the rather lovely CGI effects for the warship and the scout vessels nipping around it and it's safe to say that the school playgrounds of Britain will soon be ringing with Sontaran chants.

The cliffhanger goes on for far too long and I'm sure most viewers would have been urging the Doctor or Donna to simply smash the car windows in with a blunt instrument of some description to rescue poor Wilf as a catalytic converter goes rogue. Douglas Mackinnon directs in a suitably epic manner but with a little less confidence than some of the more seasoned directors on the show and I did feel that the episode's lighting wasn't up to the usual standard and there was an over reliance on the more gharish schemes you would associate with Sarah Jane Adventures. The overall impression is of a rather gaudy, fast paced comic strip. With this more or less just the sum of its better parts, the story is now having to rely on an equally strong or better second part if Helen Raynor wishes to avoid the disappointment of her previous efforts with the Daleks.