Doctor Who - "The Doctor's Daughter"

[iainjclark]

I'm certain I'm ambivalent.

Chunks of this episode had me cringing and rolling my eyes, which is something I hoped the new show had left behind over the last couple of years.

Thankfully the episode wastes no time in explaining the episode title. Not a daughter, so much as an instant pop-in-the-microwave sort-of-clone. Which is as contrived as it gets and about the shallowest possible way to do a 'Doctor experiences fatherhood' episode -- but at least it doesn't open any cans or release any worms, or indeed chuck a hand grenade into the middle of Doctor Who fandom.

David Tennant is great here. He gets to display a real range of emotions in this episode and he's fantastic. At one stage I thought we were going to have yet more shouting about guns being bad, but this is his least shouty, least manic episode in ages and it benefits hugely from his more naturalistic approach. When he talks about the Time War for the eleventy-first time, for once Tennant hits something close to the level of conviction and shock that Christopher Eccleston brought to similar scenes. It helps of course that the Doctor gets something of a rollercoaster ride of emotion in relation to his newfound "daughter", and I'm almost tempted to say that the reflective scenes in which he talks about his past with Donna are enough to justify the concept of giving him a daughter.

I say "almost" because, frankly, if we ever see his annoyingly perky, annoyingly plucky daughter again, someone had better be hitting her in the face repeatedly with a spade. They're aiming for some tugging of the heart-strings in the naive innocent with no past coming to experience the universe with fresh eyes, but she's entirely one note and the script barely even attempts to develop her into a rounded character. Ironically it feels as if the writers designed her to order and created her out of whole cloth in a matter of seconds. There's a joke here about the clone being half-baked but I'm too lazy to make it. She's so bright and optimistic she makes Captain Jack's first appearance look positively rounded, and feels very much like she has emerged from a production line of quirky Joss Whedon-esque heroines primed for a cookie-cutter spin off. The final sequence of her blasting off for the stars is one of the most teeth-grating in the show's history. I can't help but feel that she'll inevitably be back later in the year.

I must formally lodge an official 'groan' at the astonishingly predictable scene in which Cobb shoots the Doctor and Jenny hurls herself in his way. Leaving aside the fact that other Time Lords seem significantly less resilient than the Doctor to being shot through one heart, it's cheesy convenient plotting of the first order. I can't say I'm overly impressed by both sides laying down arms quite so readily either, but I'll forgive that part because the general drama of the Doctor's response to the shooting works well.

As for the actual main plot, it suffers from being crammed into very few scenes, competing with the Doctor's Daughter thread for time, but it's not terrible. It feels like quite a pleasing pastiche of a golden age SF short story (or an episode of The Outer Limits) and the SF elements, while contrived, are actually pretty interesting for this show. I like the numerical sequence of outward construction, the short space of time in which war and history devolve to myth, and the fact that ruins are actually vacant 'show homes' ready for habitation. Certainly it's rare to see this level of actual SF concepts in modern Who. It's fair to say that the ideas are better than the execution, and that they're more clever than they are plausible, but kudos to the show for trying. Shame the terraforming device works by smashing the glass and standing well back while the planet becomes habitable in the space of a few hours, but this is the far future so I'll cut them some slack.

The Hath are a decent design too, although they suffer from being more obviously a prosthetic rubber head on someone's shoulders than the Ood. At least they're not blokes with Rhino heads.

Where Tennant is better than average this week, his companions aren't quite so impressive. Catherine Tate suffers from being a bit too shouty -- something she never does well -- but I continue to be impressed with the level of intelligence and agency that Donna displays. This isn't the first time she's contributed a major bit of problem solving, and it's very welcome. Likewise Martha is a mixed bag here, with some good scenes but mostly being relegated to wandering around Skaro the planet in a C-plot. Freema Agyeman's performance is a little wooden in places, and the godawful scene in which the Hath jumps into the puddle to save her failed to move me on any level. On any good level anyway.

Comments

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Blimey. You are, I think, far too forgiving of this episode. It was fast-paced nonsense from start to finish. And I liked the daughter. Though that might be me being a shallow bastard there.

Tennant may have had some good moments, but they were ruined by the whole episode being at an express train pace, so they weren't allowed to stand out as well as they could have.

I could go on, but. No. I don't want to flood your comments page already.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I may have given the impression that I actually liked it, which is not strictly true. :-) But I liked the general sense of being SF (ish), and I very much liked Tennant. The rest ranged from 'Meh' to fingers-down-the-blackboard.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

But I liked the general sense of being SF (ish), and I very much liked Tennant. The rest ranged from 'Meh' to fingers-down-the-blackboard.

I agree with this comment!

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

I actually quite liked the daughter. It seems to me that they were trying to make her like the essence of the Doctor, without the weight of century upon century of loss and pain on her shoulders. With a little luck, next time we see her will be some centuries hence in her timeline and she'll be a little more like, I don't know, Romana.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Not weighed-down by history is one thing. Relentlessly upbeat and cheerful to the exclusion of everything else... I liked her far more for the catalyst she provided to the Doctor than as a character in her own right.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Would you sooner she had been a female Victor Meldrew, then?

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. ;-P

No, I just feel she needs a bit more balance. She's so relentlessly perky and cheerful that she feels like a cartoon character. I don't know, maybe it's that horrible final "To Infinity -- and Beyond!" scene that's making me feel quite so uncharitable towards her.

[fba.livejournal.com]

She reminded me of Buffy before she got all emo and whiney...

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

But right from the start you can sympathise with Buffy from the start because she's had a rough time, and so her cheerfulness is offset by her misery. She's cheerful, but struggling to get by. There isn't that sense with Jenny -- even though her life is in theory horrible, she doesn't perceive it that way.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

Well, you have to give her a break. She's only a few hours old! :)

[williamjm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that Jenny's shallowness and lack of character depth are perfectly natural considering her origin and lack of any life experience whatsoever. If she is still as shallow when she returns to the show (and I think it is inevitable she will) then I think it would be justifiable then to complain about the lack of character depth.

[tizzle-b.livejournal.com]

It was worse than I thought the Christmas episode was.

Utter tripe.

If that annoying (yet strangely fit) 'daughter' turns up again I'll be annoyed.

I do wish that this whole "ooh the time-war ooh the time-war" thing got properly tease-visited soon so that it has a proper lead in and, in turn, having a proper resolution. We've got far too much set-up for it to go nowhere at the moment I feel.

Or just make more 'Doctor daughter' type people after he rejigs 'the machine' to imprint Time Lord into the brain rather than 'War'.

Back to this ep, the one thing I did like was the whole "7 day war" aspect to it. That was clever. The rest... meh.

[ajp.livejournal.com]

I don't have too much to say on the meat of the episode (though I'd be a little more charitable than some of the contributors here); but I did rather like one scene.

The whole of the last story was spent with the Doctor being a somewhat one-dimensionally pacifistic, and the UNIT Colonel being entirely one-dimensionally gung-ho. I know we live in post-modern times, in a war-ravaged world, and where senseless gun (and other) violence is all too prevalent: and the sentiments that our current Doctor conveys ("the pen is mightier than the sword", the brain is better than the bomb, etc) are welcome; but the last two weeks have been overly simplistic and monochromatic in their presentation of that lesson. Of course war is a terrible thing; but we forget at our peril that there can be times when the alternatives are worse...

So when this episode started, I was pretty sure that this was going to be another example of more of the same; but I was pleasantly surprised. The conversation between the Doctor and Jenny (where she points out that they are the same: and he talks about the time war) instantly gave the much needed extra dimensions to the question. A cerebral Doctor who will strive for good by using his intellect not a weapon is great; a pacifist Doctor (and at times last week – I felt they were getting rather too close to that) is not. For me, this episode nicely and importantly re-centres that.

On an un-related, and geeky level, the fact that Jenny was actually the Doctor's daughter was some rather fun casting.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

It's a fair point. On the whole Doctor Who has always been unilaterally anti-gun and anti-military, and the UNIT scenes were very reminiscent of some of Pertwee's more overtly pacifist moments. In some ways they're part and parcel of UNIT's history in the series. That may explain the lack of balance, although in 'The Poison Sky' there was at least the "Starting to get a taste for it Doctor?" comment from Colonel Mace.

This episode was more nuanced because it highlighted that the Doctor is a fighter -- even though he tends to fight without resorting to violence -- and ultimately a mass murderer -- although only in that he's prepared to destroy entire invading armies, and he always gives them a choice.

I think that there were some extremely worthwhile Doctor conversations this week, even though the episode as a whole didn't really gel.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I sort of agree about Jenny. She was as cute as a boatful of buttons and it was hard not to be won over by that, but as the episode wore on I found myself wishing for any indication of Doctor-ness. Instead what we got was the uber-companion - pretty, bright, plucky girl with whom the Doctor is besotted. Towards the end of the episode I just couldn't see a difference between the way he related to her and the way he related towards Rose towards the end of the second season, or Martha in the beginning of the third. Much as I liked Tennant in this episode (I agree 100% that he nailed the Doctor's mournful side for what is probably the first time), I really didn't buy him as a dad.

I did, however, really like Donna. It's occurred to me that we talk a lot about our favorite Doctors and favorite companions, but in new Who a more useful conversation might be our favorite Doctor-companion relationships. I still like Nine-Rose the best, but Ten-Donna is skyrocketing up the chart. I like the way she needles him and encourages him to be a grownup and a decent person, while simultaneously being completely overwhelmed by the new things he shows her. It feels like a good friendship or a sibling relationship, which really works for me.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I did sort of buy Tennant's Doctor as a Dad, but only because as the episode progressed his reactions were the right ones. I understand your point that in a lot of ways Jenny was no different from any other putative companion, but the context of their genetic bond did make a difference. As I mentioned upthread, I liked her more for what she did to the Doctor than for herself.

I did, however, really like Donna.

I am, against all preconceptions and my better judgement, enjoying Donna. I know a few people, including some in my office who aren't avid fans, who find her so unwatcheable that she's spoiling the series for them. However I think that a fair viewing reveals that she's doing a creditable job. Clearly I'll deny saying this though.

I do like the very practical, very mundane side to Donna. She relates everything in the Universe back to her own experience, treats the Doctor as an equal not an idol, and yet at the same time she's wowed by the experience of travelling in the Tardis, and wowed by the Doctor himself.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

the context of their genetic bond did make a difference

What I was missing was some evidence of their genetic bond beyond simply being told that it existed. The two hearts scene did that a little, but I wanted Jenny's personality, as well as her biology, to reflect her father's. At the beginning of the episode, I thought we'd see her questioning her programming as her innate Doctor-ness rebelled against it, but that turned out to be something all of the people on the planet were capable of, and Jenny no more than any other.

at the same time she's wowed by the experience of travelling in the Tardis, and wowed by the Doctor himself.

But more by the former than the latter. Martha was the other way around, which is why I never cared for her relationship with the Doctor though I like the character in her own right. This episode didn't do much with her, though - she fared better than she did in the Sontaran two-parter, but in the end she was still incidental to the plot. All she did was take another route to where the Doctor and Donna were headed. Aside from using her scenes as filler I'm really not sure why she needed to be along for the ride.