Voyage of the Damned

It's a Christmas special, so prepare for an over-dose of twee. Or at least that's what seems to become the pattern. However, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Or not.

The problem is with Voyage of the Damned is that it is pretty forgettable. Even as I write this bits of this story keep drifting away from me like icebergs, which is ironic considering all the Titanic references.

If truth be told the only thing I really remembered about this from the first time was Kylie Minogue in her maid's outfit. Sadly I think that might end up being the only thing I remember this time around.

Basically, Voyage of the Damned is the Poseidon Adventure meets Robots of Death in space.*

Viewed as a kind of homage to the festive disaster movie and it is OK. Truth be told OK is pretty much the best description I can think of for this story. It's not awful. The acting is mostly up to snuff, even if most of the cast are clichés or designed purely to make a point, although I George Costigan's Max Capricorn definitely skirts the edge of ham but I suspect he was asked to make him like that so the blame lies elsewhere I think. And could Rickston Slade (Gray O'Brien) be any more of a capitalist cliché?

However, Slade is there to make a point. That the Doctor doesn't get to choose who lives and who dies. Mostly in this story the nice people die, although Midshipman Frame (the lovely Russell Tovey) and Mr. Copper (Clive Swift) also make it. It is Mr. Copper who makes the point about how if the Doctor could choose who lived and who died it would make him a monster. However more importantly you'd think the Doctor would have stopped promising people that they'd come out of everything alive by now. It's a recipe for unhappy memories.

Let's face it the Doctor must be suffering from a pretty terrible case of survivor guilt and you start to wonder whether perhaps underneath the series adventurous veneer there isn't a much darker and more terrible programme about the survivor of genocide and war with a death wish who is desperately trying to distract himself from the horrible memories. Unfortunately with each adventure, despite his constant victories against terrible odds, the list of the dead grows longer and the Doctor's guilt goes deeper.

Fortunately, no one in their right mind would make a series as bleak as that so we get the fun and frolics instead, which is as it should be.

And in typing that paragraph almost everything about that story is lost: Geoffrey Palmer gets to be his lugubrious self in New Doctor Who has appeared in the Classic series, Clive Swift is good as Mr. Copper also adding himself to the list of actors who've done the Classic and New Doctor Who. There's a really awful Allons-y-Alonso joke. Bannakaffalata (Jimmy Vee) is rather sweet and is used to make some rather superficial but politically correct comments about prejudice. The special effects look great.

Anything else.

The robots appear to have been ripped right off of Robots of Death, but that's OK. There's a rather sweet over-weight couple Morvin and Foon van Hoff (Clive Rowe and Debbie Chazan) who are clearly too in love and happy to survive the story to the end. There's a nice little bit of stuff involving Kylie's...sorry Astrid's shortness when she gets to kiss The Doctor. The Doctor kisses a ghost in a rather disturbing bit at the end revolving around trying to save Kyl...Astrid.

And that's about all.

It's not bad. It's not great. It's not particularly memorable. It's a bit cheesy.

It's a Doctor Who Christmas special.

Enjoy


*For full enjoyment please read that sentence out in the style of the person introducing Pigs in Space: A demonstration

Utopia-The Sound of Drums-Last of the Time Lords

And so it ends. Series Three. With an epic three-part adventure in time and space and it starts off brilliantly with Utopia where the Doctor, Martha, and a re-appearing Captain Jack find themselves at the end of the Universe.

Here the scattered survivors of humanity - plus some sharp-toothed cannibals known as Future Kind - have gathered with a view to reaching Utopia, where the last stand against the end of the Universe is rumoured to be taking place. There's a rocket but Professor Yana (Derek Jacobi) is having trouble getting it ready for launch.

Fortunately, the arrival of the Doctor and crew kick start the project and the rocket. It also starts off a whole bucket load of trouble because Professor Yana has a watch. A similar watch to the one that the Doctor had in Human Nature-Family of Blood and Martha has noticed it.

It's Martha's reaction and the steady drip-drip of words from the past that make Professor Yana pay proper attention to the watch. And before the Doctor can reach him the Professor opens the watch...and The Master is reborn.

Derek Jacobi's performance as Professor Yana-The Master is one of the best by any actor in the entire history of Doctor Who. His transformation from Yana to The Master is done almost entirely with the eyes. It's wonderful to behold. Professor Yana was friendly, slightly dotty and rather charming. Jacobi's Master would have been made one hell of an opponent for the Tenth Doctor but he's shot by his assistant Chantho (Chipo Chung) and is forced to regenerate. Into John Simm.

The Master nicks the Doctor's TARDIS, which - we will discover later the Doctor managed to semi-knacker before disappearing. Unfortunately, that dumps the Master on present-day Earth. Where he's off to do devious Master-ish things. Starting with taking over the world. I sometimes think of the Master as Brain from Pinky and The Brain: "What are we going to do today Brain?" says Pinky at the start of every episode. "The same as we do every night. Take over the world." The Master's persistence in the face of constant defeats is almost cartoonish. Now he's back there's no end to his evil.

Anyway, I digress. Utopia is a brilliant episode, perfectly paced by director Graeme Harper and superbly acted. It does a great job of re-introducing the Master, tying up some of the seeds sown in earlier episodes and launching us into the final two episodes.



The Sound of Drums is effectively an entire episode devoted to explaining what the hell's been happening since the Utopia, what the Master's plan is and getting the Doctor to the point of almost total defeat.

There's some rather silly stuff in here and Simm's performance occasionally goes over the line into ham, especially some of the grinning killing moments. Which makes the tone of this episode a bit weird. An example is the mass murder of the entire cabinet and the brutal dispatch of journalist Vivien Rook (Nichola McAuliffe) done almost as comedy.

But I realized when discussing this yesterday if there weren't these more 'light-hearted' scenes and the Master's was deadly serious then The Sound of Drums might have turned into one of the darkest and bleakest episodes in the programme's history. There's so much horror going in on here and at the end of the episode, the Doctor looks utterly defeated. And the Master's decision to decimate the Earth - in its very specific original meaning - is pretty nasty even by his low standards.

By this point The Master had managed to make himself Prime Minister, acquired a wife called Lucy (Alexandra Moen), round up Martha Jone's entire family (except Leo), set up a telepathic satellite network to help him hypnotize the Earth, set up an arrangement with The Toclafane', turn the TARDIS into a paradox machine, built a 'laser screwdriver', used Professor Lazarus's technology to enable him to age the Doctor....say what you like about the Master but his work ethic is pretty damn impressive.



It's not looking good. But Martha has escaped and the Doctor's given her a job to do.

Oh and there's a couple of rather lovely scenes: the Doctor's discussion with Jack and Martha about Gallifrey and who the Master is and The Doctor and The Master's telephone conversation. Which shows what Simm's capable of when he dials it down a bit.

The Last of the Time Lords is set a year later. The aged Doctor is being kept as a pet by the Master, Martha's family are working for the Master as servants/slaves, Lucy Saxon's gone oddly stoned and Martha's been traveling around the world on a mission. Now she's back.

Mostly this isn't bad considering the whole purpose of the episode is to get us to the end when the Doctor undoes the Master's plan and wins through. There's a couple of false dawns. Jack gets killed again. The Doctor gets aged to the point at which he turns into a sort of wide-eyed wrinkled little thing. Like Gollum but with Deputy Dawg's eyes.

Martha's plan is explained to Professor Docherty (Ellie Haddington) and Thomas Milligan (Tom Ellis). One of whom, of course, betrays her to the Master. The other one dies. Martha is captured and it all looks like it is over.

The Master has destroyed the weapon that she was sent to find by the Doctor and is about to die. But it's all an enormous double-bluff. As Martha explains to us (and The Master). The weapon was a bluff. Instead she's been travelling the world telling everyone about the Doctor and the Doctor's been...well I won't spoil it all for you.

Suffice it to say the end is the Doctor - like some kind of fairy - gets believed back to normal. It's the Doctor as Jesus. He gets to fly (and I have a friend who has a very convincing explanation about Time Lords being able to fly) and forgive The Master for his terrible crimes, which is rather magnanimous of him all things considered.

The Toclafane are banished back to the paradoxical future when the Paradox machine is destroyed by Captain Jack and we go back in time a year to the moment just after The Master has executed the President of the USA. Nothing ever happened but Martha, the Doctor and her family remember. So does the increasingly lop-sided Lucy Saxon.

Just when it looks like the Doctor is about to settle down somewhere with the Master Lucy shoots him. And in a bizarre fit of peak - cutting of his nose to spit his face on an epic scale - he dies, refusing to regenerate. The Doctor weeps.

Phew.

Martha stays behind. To look after her family and because she's realised that she can't waste her life trolling around the universe with a Doctor who can't - or won't - love her. It's a sensible decision and surprisingly realistic one for Doctor Who.

But it isn't over. At the end a hand picks up The Master's ring from amongst his ashes. This is Doctor Who The Brain...sorry, the  Master can always come back.

So three episodes. It's pretty well-paced and directed. The acting is pretty much up to snuff and there are some great scenes throughout but it fades a bit as we build towards the final acts and frankly the Doctor as Jesus is rather syrupy, not to say silly. I wish the end had been more rooted in something real (which I know is massively contradictory when I'm talking about a science-fiction series but to (sort of) quote Walt Whitman, "Do I contradict myself. Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes).

Simm's Master is a grower. Far better when calm and quiet than exuberant and grinning. It's a good return for the Master and it is nice to have him not be the cool cat with the beard for a change. He's manic. He hears the sound of drums. He's definitely one roundel short of a full TARDIS but he's pretty good in the end.

And what of Freema Ageyman's Martha. She's had a season and although I don't think she's the best actress in the world she's had her moments and it will be interested to see who they replace her with. But first Kylie Minogue.

Blink

After the double-whammy of delight that was Human Nature - The Family of Blood we get Blink, which is equally wonderful but in quite a different way.

A little more light-hearted and Doctor lite the episode is driven by a brilliant performance from Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow. I'm not sure where on her rise to Hollywood glory Mulligan was at this point but you can definitely spot an actor destined for good things here. Sally Sparrow will probably go down as the Doctor Who companion that never was, which is a shame.

The story also introduces us to the Weeping Angels, a set of creatures so gobbledygooky that their very existence is dependent on not looking at each other. They're 'quantum locked' apparently. That probably means something to someone but like a lot of Doctor Who science sounds a lot more convincing when delivered by a good actor at ninety-five miles an hour - for which I salute David Tennant once more. If you stop to think about it for a moment then it becomes less convincing, like government economic policy.

The Weeping Angels are nicely sinister though, which is great and Blink as a whole is nicely atmospheric. The Weeping Angels method of 'killing' people is also rather civilized if a little confusing. No one really 'dies' but their potential...creatures of the abstract....blah-di-blah. You know it looks less fun written down than it does on screen.

Blink is great fun though and a highlight of Series Three so far. Not THE highlight, which I reckon is Human Nature-Family of Blood but still pretty damn good.

It's also another Moffat script, which means playing around with the concept of Time travel and how time isn't quite as straightforward from the outside as it is from the inside. No Time's Arrow here, more Time's Wibbly-Wobbly Ball of Rubber Bands. Moffat is certainly a clever and thoughtful chap but I don't know it feels a little like cheating sometimes. Like the Sonic Screwdrivers 1001 get outs for the Doctor Who writer the 'leaving notes for yourself' school of Time Travel just doesn't seem very Doctor-ish to me. I like it when he has to respond to everything on a wing and a prayer, not a wing, a prayer and a series of helpful hints a future self has provided for him.

I am aware as I type all those words that I'm doing a bit of time traveling of my own, criticizing the over-whelming Moffatness of the future seasons rather than talking about Blink. Blink is also rather different in that it is Sally Sparrow who helps out the Doctor with his future and so feels slightly less convenient than they sometimes do.

Partly I'm having a problem padding this out. It's always harder to write these blogs when you like what you've seen and I do like Blink a lot. I like Sally Sparrow. I like Larry Nightingale (Finlay Robertson) who makes a good foil for Sally. I like the melancholy ending to DI Billy Shipton's story. I like the pace and direction by Hettie MacDonald. I like the 'let us scare the kids' post-story coda. I like the story's lightness of touch. I like the design of the Weeping Angels. I like the line about chickens.

So you see it's hard to say much else. I do miss the Doctor, but this would have been a much different tale if he'd been there and Sally and Larry wouldn't have had quite so much room to breathe as characters.

Good stuff.

Human Nature - Family of Blood

Paul Cornell adapted Human Nature and Family of Blood from his own Virgin New Adventure's novel Human Nature and has done a bloody good job of it with the help of a fantastic cast and a stonking central performance from David Tennant.

Human Nature starts with a zap, slows down as we establish characters and locations and then gradually picks up both pace and atmosphere as we build towards a rather brilliant cliffhanger. I miss a good cliffhanger. Whilst Family of Blood picks up the ball and runs with it pretty damn successfully.

There's more to this story than simply the Doctor v the Family of Blood. There's depth to this. There are meditations on war, on love, on loneliness, on courage, and on death. There are two of the best speeches on and about the Doctor here. Tim Latimer's (Thomas Sangster) "Fire and Ice" speech and Son of Mine/Jeremy Baines's (Harry Lloyd) "Fury of the Time Lord" speech, which are brilliantly delivered.

Then there is John Smith himself. To hide from The Family the Doctor uses a 'chameleon arch' to change himself into a human being called John Smith. The Doctor leaves instructions for Martha to look after him and then, using a rather fetching fob watch, to bring his Time Lordiness back. The process is quite painful from Time Lord to human. We never see the reverse.

What we do see though is some brilliant acting from Tennant as it dawns on John Smith that bringing the Doctor back would mean his death. It echoes the Tenth Doctor's own regeneration in a way. All that is really missing is "I don't want to go." This is Tennant's strongest performance so far as we get to see what it means to be the Doctor and what it means to be human. As Joan Redfearn (Jessica Hynes) says about John Smith in the final few moments: "In the end, he was braver than you." And there's some truth in that. To save a village, to save a world John Smith has to die. And he has to choose to die.

What the Doctor over-looked was that John Smith might fall in love, which he does. With the school matron, Joan Redfearn. Jessica Hynes is wonderful as Joan, especially at the end when John Smith is struggling and the Doctor returns. The scene when the Doctor asks her to come with him right at the end is heartbreaking. (Yes, I admit to further tears)

You also end up feeling sorry for poor old Martha who has been dragged along in the Doctor's wake, forced to play the part of a maid whilst being mocked by brats, racially abused (unpleasantly but rather gently this being Doctor Who) and constantly told off by John Smith (and others) for getting ideas above her station. I'm surprised by the end she doesn't just give the Doctor a whacking great slap and tell him to go do his own thing.

To cut a long blog short this is an exceptional Doctor Who and rather good television drama full stop. There's hardly an off-key performance. The actors playing the Family of Blood are brilliantly sinister with Harry Lloyd (as snotty schoolboy Jeremy Baines), Lauren Wilson (as the little girl Lucy Cartwright/Sister of Mine), Gerard Coran (as Mr.Clark/Father of Mine) and Rebekah Stanton (as Jenny/Mother of Mine). They're all different looking but equally sinister and creepy. Lauren Wilson's dispatch of the Head Master being a particularly nasty moment.

But there's so much to this story. The foreshadowing of World War One in both speeches and in the battle sequence when a bunch of schoolboys goes to war. The Doctor's loneliness and his alienness.

There's also what it means to be human. To be alive. In the end, John Smith was just a story but in the end isn't that what we all are: stories and memories and that part of being human is that creation of self. That there is in all of us the capacity to do great good and great evil. That it is we who decide what we should be both internally and how we are perceived by oth...

Sorry I think I've just gone a bit off the beaten track there.

I like this story. I hope you do too.

And I don't know if I've quite done it justice.

42

So first off I've got The Planet of the Evil on the phone and it would like it's plot back thanks. Yes, it says it is aware that you tweaked a bit here and there but credit where credit is due, etc. I then had The Forbidden Planet on the phone pointing out that The Planet of Evil was being a tad hypocritical as it had borrowed stuff too. It's all got rather messy at that point with talk of lawyers so I stepped away and went back to writing the blog instead.

42 is fun enough. It certainly rattles along at a fair old pace, building up the tension nicely and it gives Martha (Freema Agyeman) a bit more to do than usual, especially in the 'rest' bits when she gets to call her Mum.*

There's an attempt to get a Doctor Who monster catchphrase up and running by writer Chris Chibnall in 'Burn With Me' but the story around it isn't quite memorable enough to give it oomph. In fact, 42 suffers from being a bit forgettable.

Even now bits of it are detaching themselves from me like icebergs. The constant corridors, the countdown, the dead and the dying. It's all a bit of a blur.

I remember stuff that irritates me. How does the Doctor survive on the outside of the spaceship? I mean I know he's all Time Lord hero but standing outside a spaceship that is THAT close to a Sun. It supposes he could be protected by the shielding, perhaps it is even mentioned but the fact that I can't even remember is a bit indicative.

I won't quibble at the tension it generates. Certainly, the pseudo-real time aspect of the story (in a nod to 24 perhaps) help it that regard, whilst the aforementioned Martha's Mum moments give us a bit of a breather.

It's just a bit same old same old. A bog-standard Doctor Who plot with better special effects, which I suppose as a fan of the Classic series I shouldn't complain about too much. You could put every Doctor into this story I think and it would work. Obviously, there would be less emotion. Classic Who companions spent a lot less time worrying about their families. If they even had families, which is why despite my slightly mocking tone on occasion I do think New Doctor Who companions generally have a depth to them that Classic Who ones don't. They have a life before the Doctor and - sometimes - you can believe they'll have a life after the Doctor. Classic Doctor Who companions might have the latter but don't often really feel like they had the former.

There's some solid, if unspectacular, performances from the supporting cast, although I found it hard to believe Michelle Collins was the captain of a space cargo ship (but then I bought the idea of Beryl Reid being one in Earthshock so why worry). She does a good enough job and her death is actually rather moving. The rest of the cast do a reasonable job but already I'm finding it hard to remember who was who. I can see the actor's faces but can barely remember their character's names.

Tennant is very fast-talking and confident in this, which makes the Doctor's confession of fear a bit of a show stopper. The Doctor doesn't show fear very often so we know that he's in trouble. Fortunately getting rid of the anti-matt...sorry venting the fuel does the job and the survivors can live happily ever after.

Freema Agyeman is better in this but I'm beginning to find her a less convincing character than Rose. It might be the performance, it might be the writing and it might even be the character brief but I'm just not feeling it. Maybe that will change. Sometimes you have to see the whole curve of a character arc before making a judgment.

The story ends with Martha's Mum, a sinister woman** and mention of Harold Saxon. I sense the seeds of a story arc being sown.

*Don't get me started on Universal Roaming. I may start to foam at the mouth.
**I love the fact that Elize du Toit is actually credited as 'Sinister Woman'. How cool is that? "What parts have you played darling? Hollyoaks blah blah blah...oh and I was 'Sinister Woman' in a couple of episodes of Doctor Who."

The Lazarus Experiment

You know it isn't going to end well for Professor Lazarus* (Mark Gatiss) as soon as he says that line about changing what it means to be human. Like many a Doctor Who scientist with the best intention before him, Professor Lazarus is biting off more than he can chew.

And it doesn't end well, although it does end with a nice little homage to the ending of The Quatermass Experiment as our poor metamorphosing Professor meets his tragic end in the roof of a London Cathedral. Although it's Southwark this time, not St. Pauls. The main difference being that Victor Carroon and his fellow astronauts are innocent victims of a process whereas Professor Lazarus is experimenting on himself. Even at the end, in a wonderfully played conversation between him and the Doctor, the Professor can't let his arrogance go.

The conversation, about immortality, humanity, and death, is the highlight of the episode for me. Tennant makes you really feel the Doctor's loneliness and age, whilst Gatiss makes the Professor's motivations clearer. He's not necessarily evil but he is probably a little bit more than misguided.

Other than that this is a fun enough story without setting the world alight. We get to meet Martha's family again. Martha's mother, Francine (who is played rather brilliantly by Adjoa Andoh), doesn't like the Doctor. You suspect that she is the sort of mother that wouldn't approve of most of Martha's boyfriends. A woman of high standards and expectations. Francine is also given some information by a mysterious man on behalf of Harold Saxon about Doctor, which scares her and makes her try and separate Martha from the Doctor. It's never going to work that. Nothing cements a relationship faster than parental disapproval.

This is the most obvious mention of Harold Saxon so far in Series 3 and I suspect we can expect to hear further from him (he types as if totally ignorant of the rest of the season).**

Martha's sister, Tish (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) seems to be a similar sort of a woman to Martha. Happily getting involved with the Doctor whilst being chased by a large monster that used to be her boss. I'm not sure I'd deal with that as well as Tish, but that's probably why I wouldn't make a good Doctor Who companion. That and all the running.

Her brother, Leo (Reggie Yates), gets the least to do, except getting mildly concussed and providing Martha with a chance to do her (medical) Doctor thing.

Mark Gatiss is rather good as Professor Lazarus.*** His cold dismissal of his wife, Lady Thaw (Thelma Barlow), after his experiment has been a 'success' is one of the nastier moments in Doctor Who being ruthlessly and unpleasantly human.

I've already mentioned David Tennant's rather good in this story, where he gets to be rather old school Doctor-ish. In that sense, this is an old school Doctor Who story. Replace the Tenth Doctor with the Third. Swap Martha for Jo Grant and Martha's family for UNIT and you'd have a rather nifty Pertwee story. The Doctor even reverses the polarity - and makes a joke about how rusty he is at doing it as it's been a while - for heaven's sake.

A good effort, entertaining, old school and with one or two wonderful moments this isn't bad.

*The other person in this story who you know is going to get a bad end is the 'the only danger in here is choking on an olive' woman. Her sarcastic response to the Doctor is effectively her death sentence. That and her inability to actually RUN.

**Look it is impossible to forget everything from future episodes. I try not to let it clog up the reviews of individual stories but for me to pretend I haven't seen them would be rather silly. Sometimes I wish I hadn't. Imagine that. Lots of Doctor Who I'd never seen.

***Ah, the subtle choice of name to indicate something about a character. OK, the Professor doesn't come back from the dead but it is a bit of an obvious fate mark isn't it. If the experiment had been The Lazarus Experiment run by Professor Hastings then I'd have accepted that. Alright, maybe this one complaint is one just for me. [Folds arms in curmudgeonly fashion]

Daleks in Manhattan - The Evolution of the Daleks

The first two-part story of Series 3 rolls out The Daleks, again. It plops them in New York. I think this was supposed to be something of a blockbuster but it doesn't quite work. I suspect we should refer to it as Disappointment of the Daleks going forward.

This isn't entirely the fault of Helen Raynor, who wrote it or James Strong, who directed. It just seems to be one of those stories that in practice doesn't do what it might have been able to do on paper.

Of the two episodes, I think Daleks in Manhattan works best. It does a fine job of getting all its ducks in a row for The Evolution of the Daleks. Unfortunately, then the ducks go off on a drunken rampage.

We meet our main principles. Being Doctor Who some of them will die. Of course. We have Mr. Diagoras (Eric Loren) who has gone from building foreman to Dalek minion; the lover Laszlow (Ryan Carnes) and Tallulah (Miranda Raison); Frank (Andrew Garfield) and Solomon, the voice of - er - wisdom (Hugh Quarshie). Oh and the Pig People. The poor pig people. Of whom Laszlow, kidnapped from the theatre, is one. The Tallulah-Laszlow story is rather sweet but peripheral.

I have to confess to like Tallulah. I know she's a little bit of a cliché but Miranda Raison makes her one of the more vivid of guest characters. In comparison, most of the others fade into the background a little. With the exception of Hugh Quarshie who does a fine job of being the 'good guy in the real world' making Solomon more than just a cipher.

We get to see the Daleks before the Doctor works out they are here, which is nice. There is no point in hiding them because the title gives it away a tad. Helen Raynor fails to take a leaf out of the Terry Nation Big Book of Doctor Who Writing Tips, which would mean their appearance is the end of episode cliffhanger. Instead, our cliffhanger is the first sight of the hybrid Dalek Sec: "I am a human Dalek." he wheezes. Cue titles.

Unfortunately, the hybrid's make-up doesn't really work. It looks too much like a mask, which brings us back to the danger of tentacles in Doctor Who. Even small ones. That puts the whole story a little on the back foot. The whole transformation sequence, from the moment Dalek Sec throws out a vast wave of green guck to absorb Mr. Diagoras (but keeps his suit in almost perfect condition), doesn't quite work for me. It's all a bit silly.

Evolution of the Daleks itself has one brilliant thread running through it and that's the Daleks themselves. Their devious plotting, their secret meetings and their 'not convinced by this' look at the newly hybridized Dalek Sec are brilliant. The Daleks are always at their best when they are at their most devious. And they're the best thing in this episode.

You know Dalek Sec is in trouble and both he and the Doctor seem ignorant of the sly glances and suspicions of the Daleks. The problem is, of course, Dalek Sec is too human (and seems to prefer the human side of his personality to the Dalek one). He's shocked when the Daleks kill Solomon, especially as they've waited kindly for Solomon to finish his speech. He realizes that the Daleks as they are will survive. Nothing more. Nothing less. Dalek Sec wants more. Unfortunately, he's forgotten too much of his own Dalekness to remember what they're like.

The new Human-Dalek hybrids will be without tentacles. They'll be more human, which is really the final plunger in the coffin for Dalek Sec's colleagues who rebel creating an army of Human-Dalek hybrids that are physically human, mentally Dalek. So basically Cybermen without all the armour.

The Doctor, of course, foils this plan. The last Dalek, Dalek Caan, does the emergency temporal transfer thing and escapes. Probably to avoid the Doctor's offer of help. I'm not quite sure why Dalek Caan doesn't shoot the Doctor at this point rather than let him deliver a speech about compassion.

The Tenth Doctor is a little irritating in this story. All death wish, pontificating and shouting. He wins, of course, but at something of a cost. Lots of innocent - and not so innocent - people die in this story. Lots of them. It's rather brutal.

So - putting my best Tennant sad face on - I'm sorry. So sorry. But this isn't great. There are some good ideas in here, some nice performances and some good moments but it doesn't work. Like Fear Her or going back further Battlefield there's a good story in here that didn't quite make it.

I think partly because of the whole Human-Dalek thing. Dalek Sec's just a distraction in the end from the brilliant sneakiness of the actual Daleks (and is hamstrung by a slightly wooden delivery).

If the story had been just the Daleks lurking in the sewers trying to convert humans into Daleks then I think Season 22 would probably want to have a quiet word.  (As might Resurrection of the Daleks).

Anyway onwards and upwards.