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31ST MARCH 2007
(45-MINUTE EPISODE)
Whereas
Doomsday bled straight into The Runaway Bride, the first
episode of
the third series feels much more like a clean sheet.
Smith and Jones begins without any
pre-title sequence – the first
episode to do so since Rose - and it makes sense. Whilst I would
only take the Doctor’s jokes about having spent “fifteen years as a
postman” with a pinch of salt, there is no doubt that Smith and Jones is
set considerably after the events of The Runaway Bride. This is a
new series with a new companion and as such, a new start.
And companions
so rarely impress right from the word go, but Martha Jones does just that; Freema
Agyeman is truly exceptional in this episode. She portrays her character
with such confidence that the viewer feels like they really know Martha
within just a few short minutes
of screen time.
“As far as I’m concerned you’ve got to earn that title.”
Driven,
forceful, intelligent; a veritable glut of ‘girl power’ adjectives
spring
to mind, but not the same ones that I would use to describe
Rose.
For starters, Martha is more academic than Rose; a career
girl, even. She
is also a cut above her peers in almost every sense –
Smith and Jones
makes no bones about demonstrating how Martha
differs from
fragile colleagues like Julia and Morgenstern. When they
find themselves
stranded on the moon along with the entire hospital,
Julia turns into
a gibbering wreck whilst Morgenstern sets himself up
as a cowardly
collaborator. Only Martha has the presence of mind to
try and reassure
the hospital’s patients, and think logically about the
physics of their
situation.
Russell T Davies
recycles many introductory elements that he first used in Rose here
–
not just the
patent and necessary ingredients, but things such as the
whole ‘holding hands’ “Run!” sequence. A hospital corridor may not be as
cinematically grand as Westminster Bridge by night, but in a Doctor Who
sense I suppose it is at least a bit more traditional!
“Run!”
In the past, I
have criticised the revived series’ umming-and-arring and about whether or
not the people of (roughly) contemporary Earth are ready to accept the
knowledge that they are not alone in the universe. After all the Doctor’s spiel about a “brand new planet
Earth” in The Christmas Invasion, Stephen Cole’s novel The Feast
of the Drowned established that the population had gone back to
believing that the Sycorax and the Slitheen etc had been no more than
high-profile hoaxes, something more recently confirmed in Torchwood,
where Gwen was initially under the impression that recent alien incursions
were the result of sort
of terrorism.
Martha, however,
lost her cousin in the Battle of Canary Wharf (Ah. That explains it…)
and as such knows better. If the 21st century is indeed “when everything
changes”, then Martha
is certainly ready, and the Doctor appears to recognise this
right in her. This means that he doesn’t have to waste time trying
to convince her that aliens exist. Of course, when she looks out across
the surface of the moon and sees a platoon on intergalactic alien storm troopers heading straight for her, she would’ve had a hard time
denying their existence in any event.
I’ve always
thought the platoon of Cybermen marching across the surface of the moon in
The
Moonbase was one of the most enduring images of the Patrick Troughton
era, and whilst I doubt that in the future the Judoon’s dramatic moon landing will
ever be held in such high regard, for me it completely hammered home just
how good Doctor Who is in this day and age. No suspension of
disbelief is required – the Judoon look like they mean business. Their
spaceships may look phallic, but the standard of the CGI is outstanding.
The Judoon landing isn’t the first stunning visual in the episode though -
the hospital under the black cloud is a simple, but striking image, as so
eloquently described in the script: “like in a cartoon where a man has a
cloud over his head”.
However, as this
story sees the series effectively start from scratch again, as one would
have thought the main plot is not head-scratchingly complex. It is,
however, a damned sight more compelling than the A-plots of either Rose
or New Earth. In essence, there is a blood-sucking Plasmavore
hiding inside the hospital where Martha works and the Judoon – an
intergalactic police force – are called in to apprehend her. However, in
order to do so, they have to transfer the hospital to the moon (“neutral
territory”) because under intergalactic law the Judoon have no jurisdiction over
Earth. The second problem that the Judoon face is that plasmavores can
disguise themselves; their very nature means that they can easily absorb
the blood of another species so that they may pass themselves off as, say,
human beings.
“You’re quite the funny man, and yet I think laughing on purpose, at the
darkness.”
Anne Reid (The
Curse of Fenric)
is totally terrific as the Plasmavore, aided and abetted as she is by
the most wonderful of gimmicks – a straw. Just a normal, everyday straw
and yet Doctor Who takes it and turns it into something menacing. Watching
her exsanguinate Roy Marsden’s (Human Resources) consultant is very
nasty indeed - it will certainly put children off wanting to visit their
grandmothers for a while!
The Judoon,
though, are even better. Whilst their appearance may have been torn
straight out of Lance Parkin’s
novel Trading Futures, humanoid rhinos translate incredibly well
into the televisual medium. Clad in leather centurions’ skirts and with
the silhouette of Sontarans, the Judoon are incredibly striking visually, and aurally
they’re even bit as distinct. Nicholas Briggs’ delivery of their native
language is awesome; completely alien, yet in an all new and extremely
amusing way. All those Os!
It’s also
refreshing to find a race that is not just portrayed as bad per se.
Obviously they are not good either - all the “justice is swift” stuff is,
at best, thoroughly callous – but nevertheless their apparent amorality makes them
a lot more interesting than, say, the immoral Slitheen. They also
inject a lot of humour into the episode; there is a delightfully comic
moment where after giving Martha a thorough (and, one would imagine, very
uncomfortable) scan and det-ermining that she is in fact human, they
immediately doll out “compensation!”
More negatively,
the Slabs were a bit of a rubbish monster – they were just two blokes in
leathers and motorcycle helmets! In any other episode they could have
looked quite sinister, but next to the Judoon they just looked like cheap
miniatures!
Ultimately though, what really sets Smith and Jones apart from
Rose is that by now, the new audience knows the Doctor. They aren’t in
Rose’s shoes, they’re in his. This means that we can all share the
Doctor’s amusement as he mouths “bigger on the inside” in perfect synch
with Martha and the like. The Doctor has seen the reactions of countless
companions to the TARDIS interior and by now, even the new audience have
seen the same thing about five or six times. Naturally, Davies ensures
that although repetitive, such scenes are far from boring. In particular,
Martha’s feisty comebacks to the Doctor’s cryptic statements range from
disc-erning to downright amusing. “Not pompous at all then…”
“Your spaceship is made of wood.”
And
the production team are certainly on
the ball when it
comes to garnering media
interest.
Bludgeon a fleeting, sensationalist
snog into your
first episode for the most
tenuous of plot
reasons (“that was a gen-
etic
transfer!”); cut it into about a million trailers; stream it online; even
stick it in The Sun;
and there you have it - nine million or so viewers guaranteed. A cynical, but
smart move that
I cannot really fault. And to be fair, the snog doesn’t spoil
anything; I actually quite like to see the Time Lord getting about a bit in his old age. Besides, I don’t think that anyone can
argue with the emotional resonance that episodes like The Girl in the
Fireplace and Doomsday have. A bit of romance simply helps to
tell a better story.
“Forgive me for this, it could save a thousand lives; it means nothing.”
However, this is
not romance. This is attraction – and one-way attraction, according to this week’s Doctor Who Confidential. Like poor, tragic
Charlotte Pollard before her, it seems that Martha is destined to be the
victim of unrequited love. Her quips about the TARDIS being ‘intimate’ and
the Doctor wearing tight trousers certainly imply that she’s attracted
to him, but equally, the look on her face when he says “good”
in response to her statement
that she is not
‘remotely interested’ in him speaks volumes.
There is so much
more to enjoy about this episode too – that lovely time travel trick with
the tie; Murray Gold’s soaring orchestral ‘Martha’ waltz; David Tennant’s
madcap performance as he tries to expel röntgen radiation through his left shoe!
There is even the odd line to get the forums buzzing tonight – “Mr Saxon
was right about aliens…”
On the whole
though, my first impression of Martha and of this third series are
profoundly positive. I had my concerns when I first saw the rather
lacklustre trailer for this season at the end of The Runaway
Bride, but this episode quashed any nagging doubts that I had. It
really is more of the same, but better. Indeed, I’m sure that with Martha onside
and with his “brand new sonic screwdriver” (now there’s a novelty hit single
if ever there was one) in his brand new suit pocket, this third series has
the potential to be even better than the last. Smith and Jones is
certainly the revived series’ best opening episode to date, leaving
the exposition-crammed Rose and the workmanlike New Earth in
its wake.
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