Doctor Who 4/30.04 The Sontaran Strategem
Apr. 27th, 2008 07:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakOther then the return of Martha, the big issue of this episode, if one had watched Torchwood, to be specific, the TW episode Fragments, was "would there be UNIT bashing or not"? And the answer is...
...an overall "not". Granted, basically the only stilted dialogue of the episode is basically authorial verbalizing of team Cardiff's "we belong to the section of DW fandom that had issues with the Doctor working for a military organization like UNIT" - and not, that wasn't just RTD, the audio commentary for The Green Death has Old Who producer Barry Letts mentioning they used to get protests about that back in the 70s and sometimes later, mainly using the "that makes him a tool of the establishment" argument, though of course the great love for the UNIT characters made a big difference, generally speaking, as years went by - but in marked contrast to the goings on in the Tosh flashback of Fragments, the depiction of UNIT in The Sontaran Strategem is layered and mostly positive. Yes, the initial storming of the ATMOS factory is a chilling one for its depiction of military might and instant arrest, and one can understand why Donna responds to it the way she does. But none of the UNIT soldiers are shown to treat the factory works violently or abuse their power over them, and the two investigating soldiers whom Fragments watchers can be afraid could be depicted as thugs when one says "we can do this the easy way..." are when they think there is someone suffocating in the box/tank they find immediately concerned with saving that person. Most importantly, there are the Colonel and Sgt. Ross; the former gives as good as he gets in his exchanges with the Doctor and the script lets him make good points instead of depicting him as in the wrong (the difference to, say, Yvonne Hartmann's depiction in s2 is glaring; I'm only hesitating to call the Colonel the new Brigadier because one has to do a lot to deserve this honor, and the Colonel just had a few scenes, but he's definitely the equivalent of the other Colonel in Cornell's Scream of the Shalka, a military commander written as responsible and intelligent, as well as pointing out the contradictions in the Doctor's routine insult statements). And Ross is clearly the modern Benton, written as very sympathetic, loyal and intelligent at the same time. To quote the Doctor, we like Ross. Please don't kill him off in the next episode, Helen Raynor. So overall, my UNIT-loving heart is somewhat soothed.
(Though this inevitably leaves me with the Doylist conclusion that the Fragments flashback was Chibnall wanting Tosh's trauma to be HARDCORE, MAN without thinking through what he did there to DW continuity, which in turn settles my Watsonian conclusion that it was all a set-up on Jack's part so he could recruit Tosh. Yes indeed.)
(Also, re: the above mentioned stilted dialogue with its "I don't like people next to me carrying guns" - this is especially eye-roll inducing since the very same script has just acknowledged he literally lived for YEARS next to people carrying guns, worked for them and was friends with them a minute before it has him say this. OTOH, it's not out of character; Three made his biting "sometimes I think military intelligence is a contradiction in terms" and "that's your response to everything, is it, just shoot at it?!?" remarks while actually working for UNIT. (He just got in the face of anyone else making them as well.) )
On to other issues. The Martha/Doctor reunion and the Martha-meets-Donna scene was everything I'd hoped for, and I bet there wasn't a single member of the audience who didn't love how both women instantly owned the Doctor. "You wish." *veg* Oh, Donna Noble, I love you more than ever, and Martha, the same goes for you. I'm going to rewatch that scene as soon as I finished the review, because it rocked.
Continuity wise, I loved the Doctor asking after Martha's family first for the same reason I loved it when Jack did it in Reset - he lived with them for a year on the Valiant, they went through the year from hell together and though I think he'd have asked if that had not been the case, too, the fact it was makes it doubly important he would. And good to know everyone's suspicion about the identity of Martha's boyfriend in Reset was true - it's indeed Tom Milligan from Last of the Time Lords. Speaking of continuity and families, the "oh, it's you!" scene with Donna's grandfather and then her mother was priceless comic relief and did us the favour of establishing once and for all that Wilf doesn't just look like the vendor from Voyage of the Damned, he was the vendor. (And Sylvia would remember the Doctor as the guy who brought Donna to the reception and had killing Santas trailing him.) On the serious side again, Martha warning Donna about the danger her family could be in danger through her mere association with the Doctor? That, too, makes so much sense, and I loved it on so many levels - as more companions bonding, as proof of the impact of what happened to the Jones' had on Martha, as Martha doing something extremely responsible and sensible here and Donna responding in kind.
Which leads me to: the Doctor thinking Donna is going to leave him, starting an eloge and then realising she just meant she's going to visit her family and being embarassed. Lovely mixture of comedy and serious, that, and they're continuing to develop the Donna-Doctor relationship just right. (Having just recently watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the "but I could show you X, Y and Z'" part reminded me of Three doing this exact spiel for Sarah Jane when she intends to leave after their second adventure together, only Ten here remembers mid-speech this is Donna's decision.) I know some people will object to her later "he's amazing", but to me this is counterbalanced by the Doctor's "you saved me in so many ways" right here (plus Donna follows her praise by an immediate admonishment to her grandfather not to tell the Doctor - she knows it's not good for his ego to hear it!). What she says in his presence is that affectionate "you dumbo" when the Doctor realizes he just did his departure speech prematurely. And hooray for him teaching her how to steer the TARDIS! Which, you know, makes sense. (Am reminded again of poor Tegan being so proud of her TARDIS driving skills in Castrovalva and then getting crushed when finding out the Master had Adric program the course.) And again emphasizes the buddies and partnership element of their relationship. Methinks Donna will get more practice iwth the TARDIS before this season is over.
(Oh, yes: and we get another name check of "the Medusa cascade".)
The Sontarans: remember how back in Dalek, Rob Shearman's script has some characters mock the Dalek for its lack of ability to get up the stairs before the Dalek starts to levitate and exterminates left, right and center? Following this model of letting a character verbalize the hokey look of a villain, then show just how dangerous said villain can be, we have this happening with the Sontarans. Mind you, they're still basically DW Klingons, but they come across as perfectly servicable villains, the two times it gets pointed out to us that to the Sontarans, humans look just as similar and alike was neat, and the gas hidden in all the ATMOS driving systems was truly nasty. (Sidenote: now of course it's clear why Catherine Tate noticed the "ATMOS" sign on the taxi in podcast for Partners in Crime and was immediately shushed by David Tennant and Phil Collinson.) Meanwhile, the human villain was basically the Doctor stripped of his positive traits, emphasized in both the conversation between the Doctor and the Colonel and in the later confrontation between the Doctor and Mr. Teenage Genius - just the genius smugness without the ability to care, the sense of isolation growing a superiority complex without this being balanced by the occasonal acknowledgment of fallibility and someone else being right. "It was nether enough for me," says the boy about the Earth, which the Doctor might have said about Gallifrey (his romance with his home planet did not start until it was irrevocably gone, reminding one about Oscar Wilde's quip about how the romance of Ireland doesn't start until you've left it forever). The Doctor has been likened to Peter Pan at times; this is Peter Pan without either lost boys or Wendy, and he couldn't care less. Otherwise, this character also reminded me of the trio in BTVS' season 6, seeing the death of people and an invasion as nothing but an exciting video game. A mixture between Warren and early Andrew. "This is so cool" indeed.
I could see the Martha-gets-cloned thing near the end coming, and I bet Freema relishes the chance to play Evil!Martha as this is always fun for actors. Ironically, this and the two soldiers hypnotized struck me as very much a Three era thing - Jo and Mike Yates, who both got hypnotized by villains (Jo by the Master in Terror of the Autons, and Yates by BOSS in The Green Death, could empathize. (Oh, and there was the Claws of Axos incident of alien-grown doubles of UNIT personell, too. Well, guest star personell.) I do hope, however, that Real!Martha will manage to get out of captivity in time to help saving the day in part II.
Cliffhanger: as I said, nasty, and I do hope Gramps is just out of it, not dead. Incidentally, this is the second time this season the sonic screwdriver is foiled; maybe a response to it being in danger of being used to solve all problems?
...an overall "not". Granted, basically the only stilted dialogue of the episode is basically authorial verbalizing of team Cardiff's "we belong to the section of DW fandom that had issues with the Doctor working for a military organization like UNIT" - and not, that wasn't just RTD, the audio commentary for The Green Death has Old Who producer Barry Letts mentioning they used to get protests about that back in the 70s and sometimes later, mainly using the "that makes him a tool of the establishment" argument, though of course the great love for the UNIT characters made a big difference, generally speaking, as years went by - but in marked contrast to the goings on in the Tosh flashback of Fragments, the depiction of UNIT in The Sontaran Strategem is layered and mostly positive. Yes, the initial storming of the ATMOS factory is a chilling one for its depiction of military might and instant arrest, and one can understand why Donna responds to it the way she does. But none of the UNIT soldiers are shown to treat the factory works violently or abuse their power over them, and the two investigating soldiers whom Fragments watchers can be afraid could be depicted as thugs when one says "we can do this the easy way..." are when they think there is someone suffocating in the box/tank they find immediately concerned with saving that person. Most importantly, there are the Colonel and Sgt. Ross; the former gives as good as he gets in his exchanges with the Doctor and the script lets him make good points instead of depicting him as in the wrong (the difference to, say, Yvonne Hartmann's depiction in s2 is glaring; I'm only hesitating to call the Colonel the new Brigadier because one has to do a lot to deserve this honor, and the Colonel just had a few scenes, but he's definitely the equivalent of the other Colonel in Cornell's Scream of the Shalka, a military commander written as responsible and intelligent, as well as pointing out the contradictions in the Doctor's routine insult statements). And Ross is clearly the modern Benton, written as very sympathetic, loyal and intelligent at the same time. To quote the Doctor, we like Ross. Please don't kill him off in the next episode, Helen Raynor. So overall, my UNIT-loving heart is somewhat soothed.
(Though this inevitably leaves me with the Doylist conclusion that the Fragments flashback was Chibnall wanting Tosh's trauma to be HARDCORE, MAN without thinking through what he did there to DW continuity, which in turn settles my Watsonian conclusion that it was all a set-up on Jack's part so he could recruit Tosh. Yes indeed.)
(Also, re: the above mentioned stilted dialogue with its "I don't like people next to me carrying guns" - this is especially eye-roll inducing since the very same script has just acknowledged he literally lived for YEARS next to people carrying guns, worked for them and was friends with them a minute before it has him say this. OTOH, it's not out of character; Three made his biting "sometimes I think military intelligence is a contradiction in terms" and "that's your response to everything, is it, just shoot at it?!?" remarks while actually working for UNIT. (He just got in the face of anyone else making them as well.) )
On to other issues. The Martha/Doctor reunion and the Martha-meets-Donna scene was everything I'd hoped for, and I bet there wasn't a single member of the audience who didn't love how both women instantly owned the Doctor. "You wish." *veg* Oh, Donna Noble, I love you more than ever, and Martha, the same goes for you. I'm going to rewatch that scene as soon as I finished the review, because it rocked.
Continuity wise, I loved the Doctor asking after Martha's family first for the same reason I loved it when Jack did it in Reset - he lived with them for a year on the Valiant, they went through the year from hell together and though I think he'd have asked if that had not been the case, too, the fact it was makes it doubly important he would. And good to know everyone's suspicion about the identity of Martha's boyfriend in Reset was true - it's indeed Tom Milligan from Last of the Time Lords. Speaking of continuity and families, the "oh, it's you!" scene with Donna's grandfather and then her mother was priceless comic relief and did us the favour of establishing once and for all that Wilf doesn't just look like the vendor from Voyage of the Damned, he was the vendor. (And Sylvia would remember the Doctor as the guy who brought Donna to the reception and had killing Santas trailing him.) On the serious side again, Martha warning Donna about the danger her family could be in danger through her mere association with the Doctor? That, too, makes so much sense, and I loved it on so many levels - as more companions bonding, as proof of the impact of what happened to the Jones' had on Martha, as Martha doing something extremely responsible and sensible here and Donna responding in kind.
Which leads me to: the Doctor thinking Donna is going to leave him, starting an eloge and then realising she just meant she's going to visit her family and being embarassed. Lovely mixture of comedy and serious, that, and they're continuing to develop the Donna-Doctor relationship just right. (Having just recently watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the "but I could show you X, Y and Z'" part reminded me of Three doing this exact spiel for Sarah Jane when she intends to leave after their second adventure together, only Ten here remembers mid-speech this is Donna's decision.) I know some people will object to her later "he's amazing", but to me this is counterbalanced by the Doctor's "you saved me in so many ways" right here (plus Donna follows her praise by an immediate admonishment to her grandfather not to tell the Doctor - she knows it's not good for his ego to hear it!). What she says in his presence is that affectionate "you dumbo" when the Doctor realizes he just did his departure speech prematurely. And hooray for him teaching her how to steer the TARDIS! Which, you know, makes sense. (Am reminded again of poor Tegan being so proud of her TARDIS driving skills in Castrovalva and then getting crushed when finding out the Master had Adric program the course.) And again emphasizes the buddies and partnership element of their relationship. Methinks Donna will get more practice iwth the TARDIS before this season is over.
(Oh, yes: and we get another name check of "the Medusa cascade".)
The Sontarans: remember how back in Dalek, Rob Shearman's script has some characters mock the Dalek for its lack of ability to get up the stairs before the Dalek starts to levitate and exterminates left, right and center? Following this model of letting a character verbalize the hokey look of a villain, then show just how dangerous said villain can be, we have this happening with the Sontarans. Mind you, they're still basically DW Klingons, but they come across as perfectly servicable villains, the two times it gets pointed out to us that to the Sontarans, humans look just as similar and alike was neat, and the gas hidden in all the ATMOS driving systems was truly nasty. (Sidenote: now of course it's clear why Catherine Tate noticed the "ATMOS" sign on the taxi in podcast for Partners in Crime and was immediately shushed by David Tennant and Phil Collinson.) Meanwhile, the human villain was basically the Doctor stripped of his positive traits, emphasized in both the conversation between the Doctor and the Colonel and in the later confrontation between the Doctor and Mr. Teenage Genius - just the genius smugness without the ability to care, the sense of isolation growing a superiority complex without this being balanced by the occasonal acknowledgment of fallibility and someone else being right. "It was nether enough for me," says the boy about the Earth, which the Doctor might have said about Gallifrey (his romance with his home planet did not start until it was irrevocably gone, reminding one about Oscar Wilde's quip about how the romance of Ireland doesn't start until you've left it forever). The Doctor has been likened to Peter Pan at times; this is Peter Pan without either lost boys or Wendy, and he couldn't care less. Otherwise, this character also reminded me of the trio in BTVS' season 6, seeing the death of people and an invasion as nothing but an exciting video game. A mixture between Warren and early Andrew. "This is so cool" indeed.
I could see the Martha-gets-cloned thing near the end coming, and I bet Freema relishes the chance to play Evil!Martha as this is always fun for actors. Ironically, this and the two soldiers hypnotized struck me as very much a Three era thing - Jo and Mike Yates, who both got hypnotized by villains (Jo by the Master in Terror of the Autons, and Yates by BOSS in The Green Death, could empathize. (Oh, and there was the Claws of Axos incident of alien-grown doubles of UNIT personell, too. Well, guest star personell.) I do hope, however, that Real!Martha will manage to get out of captivity in time to help saving the day in part II.
Cliffhanger: as I said, nasty, and I do hope Gramps is just out of it, not dead. Incidentally, this is the second time this season the sonic screwdriver is foiled; maybe a response to it being in danger of being used to solve all problems?
