REVIEW:
And so we come to the first 2-parter of the new season, and what a romp it is! This episode is jam-packed with three important returns: the return of Martha Jones, the return of UNIT, and the return of the Sontarans.
Martha Jones was the Doctor's companion in the previous season, and through her travels and trials, she's matured and changed. Originally she was in love with the Doctor, but in the end she realized it was better for her to leave in order to live her own life and get over her feelings for him since he would never reciprocate. Martha made an appearance in a 3-episode story arc in the spinoff series Torchwood, in which we learn that she finished her medical training and got a job with UNIT after the Doctor called in a favor. Now she's more serious about her career and her life, as well as engaged to be married.
One of the main issues would have to be the interaction bewteen Donna and Martha. Fortunately they befriend each other quickly and easily, without any petty fighting over the Doctor (something he's concerned might happen after a similar situation between Rose and his old friend Sarah Jane Smith back in Season 2). I like this development, because it helps to highlight Martha's maturity as well as Donna's dinstinctly unromantic feelings for the Doctor.
And although Martha's return is great in and of itself, with so many other plot threads running at the same time she could have been lost, or relegated to a minor role. How to fix this? Create the evil Martha clone. The clone is able to fill an important role in the story, while leaving the audience wondering when and if this imposter will be exposed.
Now we come to UNIT. Formed after an alien invasion of London in the 60s, UNIT is the primary defense force of Earth, and an organization the Doctor worked for during his exile back in his third incarnation. In the classic series their name stood for United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, but due to the current real-life political climate, the United Nations asked the Doctor Who team to modify the name in an effort of disassociation. Now they are referred to as the Unified Intelligence Taskforce.
While they have been mentioned several times in the new series and Torchwood, this is UNIT's first official appearance since the 1989 story Battlefield from the final season of the classic series. Back then, UNIT was not often used to it's full effectiveness, and this story gives them a bit more to do, although their tactics are still heavy-handed, which clashes with the Doctor's more pragmatic approach and the fact he knows the enemy much better. In the end though, they manage pull through and their leader, Col. Mace, does prove that they can effectively deal with a supposedly superior enemy.
This leads us to the third major element of this story: the Sontarans.
Among the things Russel T. Davies - executive producer, head writer, and the man who got the show back on the air - intended to do with the new series was update classic aliens and villains. First it was the Daleks, then the Cybermen, then the Master, and now the Sontarans. This is their first appearance in the TV series since 1985.
The basic idea did not change: the Sontarans are a race of cloned soldiers, their entire culture and identity defined by war. Since their introduction back in the 1974 story The Time Warrior, the design remained relatively the same although their height changed some. With the new Sontarans, they chose to go back to a height of 5 feet, as per the Doctor's original description of them as "nasty, brutish and short." The iconic elements of the design, such as the domed helmet, head like a troll, three-fingered hands, and the probic vent all remained, while their armor was updated and given a more sturdy appearance.
The story also marks the first proper adventure involving Donna's family, although the Doctor had previously met them on separate occasions (Donna's mother in The Runaway Bride, and her grandfather in the recent Christmas special Voyage Of The Damned). While Sylvia acts like mothers before her and distrusts the Doctor, recognizing him as a walking embodiment of chaos, Wilfred is thrilled by the idea of being able to meet an alien, and in a way he's living vicariously through Donna, wanting her to experience adventures he's now too old for.
The final element of the story that weaves everything together is the ATMOS. This is something that Doctor Who does best: take an ordinary object most of us take for granted, and turn it into something sinister. With millions of cars in the world today, what better way for aliens to take over our planet? The story preys on the fear of what we are doing to the Earth every day with pollution. Something like the ATMOS, which reduces carbon emmisions to zero, sounds like a nice idea, but as the Doctor points out this would lead to faster consumption of the world's oil supply, once again proving that whether it's the depletion of resources or an alien invasion plot, there's really no such thing as a free ride.
And it's not just the poluution. ATMOS also turns a useful thing like satellite navigation into a deadly weapon. What if someone could control your car's navigation and use it to kill you?
This 2-part story throws a lot at the audience and manages to weave it all together successfully.
BUILDING THE STORY ARC:
- Rose makes another brief appearance, this time on the TARDIS screen silently calling out "Doctor!" before she fades away again.
- Something that's been mentioned quite often lately is the Medusa Cascade. I'm not sure if this is going to be one of the story arc elements, but it's frequency means it's worth keeping an eye on.
REACTION:
This is the kind of story I just eat up, and could easily watch again and again.
It's nice to see Martha return, although it hasn't been that long since her apperance in Torchwood. Of course for much of the story she's replaced by her evil clone, but this helps the story along by giving the Sontarans access into UNIT itself. With the Doctor playing her as a tripple agent, he's able to stop UNIT from launching a nuclear strike even when his pleas to Col. Mace fall on deaf ears, soemthing that wouldn't work without the clone.
I'm very glad that Martha and Donna got along and became friends. A rehashing of the Rose/Sarah Jane catfight would have brought the story down and gone completely against the maturity of both characters.
I loved the Doctor's visible discomfort at working with the military. While He was an employee of UNIT a long time ago, he would still prefer to investigate and solve the problem in his own manner rather than also having to babysit a bunch of soldiers. It's nice seeing him try to work on a way out of this while keeping two military forces from knocking the hell out of each other.
I also like how they kept some things about UNIT the same: their winged globe symbol remains, as well as their system of call signs - Greyhound for the soldiers and Trap 1 for command.
I'm very pleased with the reintroduction and update of the Sontarans. The prothestics are integrated into the actors' faces much better, and the suits are a vast improvement: they look much more like armor that's been molded to the body rather than a flight suit they've been zipped into. The collar is also firmly bolted into the rest of the armor, rather than just resting on the suit, which led to a lot of flopping around on the old costumes. I also like how their reproduction by cloning, while always mentioned, was finally featured as a centrol plot point. I enjoyed other little touches, such as their chant of "Sontar-Ha!" when going into battle, as well as their constant spouting of the words "honor" and "glory". Elements like these add a ritualistic aspect to their wiews of warfare that were absent in their previous portrayals.
My only disappointment is that while the Sontaran/Rutan war is mentioned yet again, the two races have yet to appear together in the same story! I hope this is something the new series will finally do at some point down the road.
Watching these episodes brought to mind the best elements of the classic series. It was like a warm flash of nostalgia, something for the fanboy in me to giggle over and love every minute of it. I would, without hestitation, declare this one of the best stories, and 2-parters, of the new series.
