Doctor Who 4×05: The Poison Sky

May 6th, 2008 11:59am by rusty-halo | 20 Comments »

I think jaydk said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this episode. Go read her; she’s awesome. We should just start recording our post-episode discussions and podcasting them, because just about everything we say in our reviews comes from there, and I can never even remember who said what first.

But anyway. I liked “The Poison Sky,” so I’ll write my thoughts while I still remember them.

* I’m glad that Sylvia finally got to do something worthy of squee. You can see where Donna gets her practical problem-solving skills. Though Donna’s cleverness was mysteriously missing in this scene, as was the Doctor’s, in order to give Sylvia a chance to shine. That’s what I mean by bad writing, when you have to distort the other characters in order to get your point across. Everyone else has to look dumb so Sylvia can save the day.

* I adore Wilf. I just completely love him. I’m so glad we’re seeing a companion’s family member who is supportive and positive, who understands the value of adventure and experience and the wonder of seeing the universe. It’s great to see him cheer Donna on and share her joy. He’s not demanding anything from her; he’s just happy that she’s happy. This must be where Donna gets her big heart and her sense of wonder.

* Donna continues to kick ass. I love her lack of fuss over being given a TARDIS key. It’s not that she doesn’t value it, but she’s far too practical to treat it like a religious experience.

Her relationship with the Doctor is giving me a big sister/little brother vibe. She brings him down to earth, gives him shit when he starts to go off the rails, but she’s supportive and comforting when he really needs someone. You can really see the best aspects of Sylvia and Wilf in her; I see people complaining that Donna has no characterization and can’t imagine what show they’re watching.

And the Doctor recognizes her abilities and encourages her when she needs it. It’s so very human how uncertain she is about knocking out the Sontaran guard. It’s all fine for an action hero type character to do such a thing, but Donna’s a real person and if you really had to do that, you would be terrified. I love how genuine she is, and how they manage to ratchet up the tension of a rather generic scene by showing it through Donna’s eyes.

The Doctor doesn’t want to ask so much of Donna, but he has to because it’s the only way he can save the earth. It’s one of those things a lot of fandom never gets–that he uses people as a last resort, that his purpose isn’t selfish, that he never asks more of others than he’s willing to do himself. This is part of why he inspires others to heroism. (And: “Donna, stop talking about yourself like that. You can do this. I promise.” After a lifetime of her mother telling her she’ll fail, Donna so needs to hear this.)

* I think I like the Sontarans best of all the big oldschool villains so far. They have expressions in their faces and voices! It’s a nice change from the emotionless monotony of the Cybermen and Daleks. (Although I must admit a huge fondness for the Daleks; they’re so cute that I always just want to pet them.) But the Sontarans have personalities and are more relatable; they’re not far off from a warlike human culture. (Actually, they totally reminded me of little potato-shaped versions of the Spartans in 300. “For the glory of Sparta Sontar!”)

* Martha was so much less annoying in this episode. As with Torchwood, they got her big Mary Sue intro out of the way and then pretty much forgot about her. The real Martha didn’t even show up until thirty minutes into the episode.

The “acting” in her clone’s death scene was pretty painful, but the scene itself wasn’t that bad. Yeah, the pure awesomeness of Martha’s memories overcame the clone’s evil programming, and then clone!Martha gave a speech about how awesome Martha is, but… wait, why did I like it? Right. It wasn’t too long or weepy, and Martha’s theme music is really beautiful, and Martha did manage to use the opportunity to gain useful information (at the Doctor’s urging, of course), and, well, watching “yourself” die would be pretty upsetting, so I don’t think it was out of line. I’d have expected something similar from any companion in that situation.

And I actually really liked the old new team of the Doctor, Donna, and Martha. Martha’s not so bad without that awful suffocating crush and the corresponding doe eyes/hero worship. I loved the way she ran to the Doctor after he returned from his near-suicide mission; it was a friend caring about another friend. I think that’s the first time we’ve seen her interact with him without an undertone of it really being about her, of her wanting something from him.

The only thing that really annoyed me was how opposed she was to traveling in time and space again. I just cannot get behind a character with so little sense of curiosity and adventure. It was always about the crush for her, never really about time and space. Time and space, people! Like I’ve said before, you’d have to pry that TARDIS from my cold dead fingers.

At least she tells him she’s better for having traveled with him. Hah. I called it in my “Partners in Crime” review:

“Destroyed half her life”? “It got complicated, and that was all my fault”? Oh, poor Doctor. He’s got such a guilt complex. I’m sure Martha will show up later on being AWESOME and telling him how she wouldn’t have traded the experience for the world, and then hopefully he’ll get over it.

So I hope this is another step in him dealing with his guilt issues.

* Helen Raynor may suck at plot (why not “increase the ATMOS devices to maximum” in the first place?), subtlety (could that environmentalism metaphor be any more tacked on and heavy handed?), writing in general… but she’s pretty good at dialog. Maybe that’s why they keep her around? There were a lot of great lines in this one (and in the previous, now that I think of it). “Are you my mummy?” of course takes the cake. (I think we had to pause it from laughing so hard.) The episode does suffer from an absurd amount of exposition, but at least Tennant manages to babble it at warp speed.

* I didn’t think I’d buy Rattigan’s redemption, but it ended up working for me. He literally had the emotional maturity of a child: left out, egomaniacal, and desperate to belong. He went from hero-worshiping the Sontarans to hero-worshiping the Doctor. We’d already seen him admire the Doctor’s intelligence, so it made sense that he admired the Doctor’s self-sacrifice. And that’s what the Doctor does, inspires others to make better choices.

I liked that the rest of the smart kids reacted with contempt to Rattigan’s plan. It avoided implying that Rattigan is a commentary on all nerds and just made it a story about one particular screwed-up nerd.

* OMG UNEXPECTED ROSE! AGAIN! I love this so much, and can’t wait to see what it’s building up to, even though I’m sure I’ll get my heart broken. RTD is a master of foreshadowing; he sure knows how to set up a climax.

* I have to quote jaydk about the Doctor’s attitude toward UNIT:

I got the impression that the Doctor’s automatic and somewhat over the top dislike of the military is a reflection of his loathing for his own violent and destructive capabilities, particularly post-destruction of Gallifrey.

Exactly! There’s so much more going on there than him just being a snarky ass. He sees his own dark side in UNIT, so he does react with visceral and over-the-top loathing. And yet you can see how much he is repressing part of himself when he briefly forgets himself and squees along with them. (Well, that and it’s also his general squee about human ingenuity.)

I thought the episode struck a nice balance with its portrayal of UNIT. They make mistakes, but they figure some stuff out too. They’re an imperfect solution from a planet that doesn’t have anything like the Time Lord knowledge the Doctor has. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for better and criticize where they go wrong, but it doesn’t mean they’re entirely useless either; they seem to be the best we’ve got. And at least they’re not as incompetent as Torchwood. (Though I think I did see some of Torchwood’s influence when Captain Price kissed Colonel Mace.)

But the episode didn’t sugar coat UNIT’s flaws. It’s not the mere fact that they use violence; it’s that they use violence as a first choice. Or even as any choice other than last resort. And it costs Ross his life. I was sad to see Ross go (and not just for the slashy potential, honest; I loved the friendly relationship he’d developed with the Doctor) but I’m glad that they put a human face on the consequences of violence, and killing Ross made it hurt. I loved “His name was Ross”–this show really has a theme about the power of names–and the way Tennant portrayed the Doctor’s sorrow, that moment of just being lost and struggling to deal. Every time he loses another person you get the sense that this could be it, the one that finally pushes him completely over the edge.

I’ve seen accusations that the Doctor is a hypocrite for criticizing UNIT when he’s committed genocide himself, but the difference is that violence is never the Doctor’s first choice. It’s always the last resort, the hard choice when there’s nothing else he can do.

And, wow, did this episode ever explore that theme! The Doctor doesn’t ask any sacrifice from others that he wouldn’t do himself. And here we get the ultimate “violence as last resort”; the Doctor is willing to die just to offer the Sontarans a choice. There’s so much going on here: as always, he shows immense respect for life and hope that people can change and make better choices. But it’s also his guilt complex in action; the fact that he can barely live with the suffering he’s already caused, and that he’ll do almost anything to avoid causing more. Would he rather die than live with himself after having killed again? Would he have been able to push the button at all? I like that there isn’t an easy answer; we’ve seen him make the choice (the Time War, Pompeii) and we’ve seen him not (“The Parting of the Ways”). What an incredible recurring question for a character.

They struck the perfect balance here between heroic savior Doctor and snarky trickster Doctor, too. The Doctor had so many great Machiavellian moments. He instantly figures out clone!Martha and keeps her in play to serve his purposes. He manages to secretly communicate with Donna while seeming to mock the Sontarans. (And he turns the channel to cartoons! The sonic screwdriver has a “change channel to cartoons” setting! Did anyone flash back to the scene of the Master watching Teletubbies? versaphile, this is what the Doctor and the Master will do when/if the Master returns: watch cartoons together!)

I love him being an ass to the Sontarans (this is what I mean about Raynor being redeemed by good dialogue, and Tennant blows the scene out of the water), tossing aside clone!Martha’s and Luke’s guns with contempt, and whining about being stuck on earth. To the people who keep insisting that the Doctor really wants to settle down and raise tiembabies, I’m just going to keep quoting this at you: “I’m stuck on earth like an ordinary person, like a human! How rubbish is that?” Hee, just remember the tone of indignant outrage as he says it.

I loved the Doctor crossing his fingers while hoping for his atmosphere-burning-skience-solution to work. It’s those little touches that make Tennant such a joy to watch.

The Doctor lies about having a TARDIS remote control. Um, get one, please? I know it’s just the writers hanging a lantern, but it feels so silly to have the Doctor himself call it out and then do nothing about it. (I know, a TARDIS remote control would kill half the potential plots, but it’s really getting ridiculous that he doesn’t just get one. Unless, y’know, you fanwank that he wants the extra challenge, or something.)

I laughed at the Doctor shouting “Get off me!” in the middle of Donna’s hug, and interrupting his comforting of a frantic Martha in order to answer the phone. It’s so Doctor, always too busy saving the world to bother with social niceties.

The Doctor is so matter-of-fact when saying goodbye to Donna and Martha. (No melodrama; he’s like the anti-John Smith.) I think the fact that he even said goodbye at all is character growth; he’s starting to realize how much he means to his friends, and how much power he has to hurt them. (a_white_rain wrote a great post about this scene here.) My favorite aspect was Donna’s reaction to his return; she hits him, because she’s so angry at him for almost dying, then she grabs him as if to reassure herself that he’s really still alive. Tate just so completely sells that moment, that combination of anger and terror and love you feel when you nearly lose someone.

I don’t see how anyone could watch that scene and then keep whining about how mean/rude/evil the Doctor is. He has such respect for life that he’s willing to die to give the Sontarans a choice. That one scene encapsulates so much of what I love about him. He’s the antithesis of the typical modern action hero, not just because he solves problems with brains rather than brawn, but because he never loses his respect for life and his belief that people can change for the better.

Doctor Who puts the casual, “necessary” violence of every other show into perspective. Killing is never casual for the Doctor, and he struggles with it every single time. It might not even be necessary, and it certainly shouldn’t be easy to choose, and with the Doctor it never is–you’re never even sure what choice he’ll make. Which is how it should be.

Current Mood: happy & thoughtful