The Waters of Mars
I must be honest - three quarters of that bored me to tears.
A lot of it was very ham fisted - I mean did we really need to see that repeated jump cut to the computer screen in order to show that the base blew up and everyone died in 2059? We got the point straight away - it didn't need to be hammered home like that. The runnning joke about the bikes was cute but shame the Mars base looked quite so much like the corridor in the film studio that it clearly was.
And comedy robots? Yeesh.
It was a really good idea for a monster - I mean how the hell do you fight water? You don't. As the Doctor said - water always wins. There was no way to prevent the water contaminating everyone. But they didn't seem to be used to very good effect. Creepy monster - flat execution. Apart from the nice set piece of the water spraying down and trapping the female settler in the room the monsters were probably the least threatening I've seen on Doctor Who for a while. They looked great but they delivered no scares at all. The monsters themselves didn't have a personality beyond the two lines that were given to them when the woman was in quarantine and weren't given much backstory beyond "they were in the lake and infected everyone via the water filter".
The other problem as is clear from my references to 'the woman" and "female settler" - zero character development. I can't tell you the names of any of the characters apart from Lindsay Duncan's. They were for the most part utterly forgettable and as such we didn't really care when they got infected or died - and introducing schmaltzy touches like one of them watching touching scenes from home while she got infected didn't inspire me to care about her fate. I mean what a complete and total waste of Peter OBrian - hardly any screen time at all. They hinted at an intriguing connection with Adelaide but never expanded on it. Very much disposable characters - still better than Planet of the Dead's bunch of tired old comic creations but hardly memorable.
Lindsey Duncan was absolutely superb though - sacred and stoic at the same time and determined to do whatever needed to be done to ensure that history didn't change. Her stand off with Tennant was electrifying. But I have to question whether sucicide is really an appropriate resolution for a story airing at tea time. This is meant to be children's tv after all.
Rusty does like his tried and tested themes so the notion that the monsters weren't really the monsters in this - the Doctor and his extraordinary arrogance was is hardly breaking new ground. The Doctor frustrated the hell out of me for three quarters of this - he was so bloody passive, just bleating that he needed to leave. I mean for heaven's sake he saved the family in Pompeii - he could easily have saved the colonists in the Tardis and taken them elsewhere without affecting the legacy they left behind.
By the time he did eventually get spurred to action I was literally shouting "About fucking time" at the screen.
And then it all went a bit mad - after 3 series of moping quite a bit and wittering on about preserving the timelines he suddenly goes all "insane Timelord" and decides that actually as he is a Timelord he can do what the fuck he likes. And for the 5 seconds that lasted for it was actually quite fun - Tennant was actually really rather frightening in his stand off with Adelaide only coming to his senses when she kills herself. Not sure it was strictly necessary to bring back the Ood to hammer home that his time is at an end but after a very dull set up it was quite an electrifying final 15 minutes.
I have zero hope that RTD will be able to even vaguely do justice to Tennant in the final episodes but at least we don't have that long to wait for Simm and his blonde locks.
Edited to say that after some thought I think my biggest issue is that this felt like an episode that was crafted solely so that we could get those last 15 minutes.45 minutes of not particularly suspenseful monster of the week plot complete with intriguing but not scary monsters and poorly crafted forgettable characters just so that we could have that exceptional showdown between Tennant and Duncan and get Ten emotionally in the place he needs to be for the finale.
And that showdown was amazing.
"No one should have that much power"
"Tough."
With one little word Ten became a much more terrifying prospect than the Master could ever be. A Timelord running around completely unchecked playing with timelines and occasionally saving "the little people" if it suits his whims. This was a Doctor a million times more terrifying than the one Donna dragged away from drowning the Rachnoss' children. His arrogance was astounding and Tennant was just downright chilling in that moment. Because who's going to stop him? Noone.
And absolute credit to Lindsay Duncan for effortlessly matching Tennant. Adelaide was a superb character - she could see the big picture far better than Ten could and she did what needed to be done. I could have done without the magic Ood appearing while Ten was having an emo moment lamenting his hubris - we already knew the Doctor's song is ending- again we didn't need it hammering home.
But my problem was that the last 15 minutes didn't seem to flow very organically from what went before. So we ended up with 45 minutes of dull action and 15 minutes of superb character drama which sat somewhat uneasily with each other.