Whovian Chatter: The Tennant Years Series Three

Ghost here, thanks for joining.

I'm going to be examining Doctor Who... every single episode.  I'm going to take you on a journey through the 50+ years worth of this show, showcasing the good and the bad along the way.  For each episode I'm going to give you a very brief rundown of the plot, how good/bad the story is, and anything interesting about the episode.  Basically I'll just talk about whatever comes to mind for each of them.  These will be a more in-depth overview of the series as a whole so you can see which stories or episodes (if any) you want to check out for yourself.  Today I'm going to be talking about

The Tenth Doctor

David Tennant

Series Three

Before I jump into this season, to date there have been two animated stories/episodes for the modern show.  I'm not exactly sure why these were created but I'm glad of it all the same; more Doctor is usually a good thing.  While the second of the animated specials features no companion and as such has a more comfortable spot later on down the road, the first one features the Series Three companion Martha Jones.  While its placement is not definitive, most people agree that it belongs in the timeline somewhere around the place I have put it.  Most streaming sites don't even have the animated specials as part of the series but I find them interesting or bizarre enough to include here.

Series three ran from March 31, 2007 to June 30, 2007 and contained thirteen episodes.  With Billie Piper leaving the show the previous season, a new companion was required in the form of Martha Jones.  Martha took the longest for me to like for two reasons.  First off, she starts the season off being in love with the Doctor (something we've already seen) but him being oblivious to this fact.  Then, at the end of the season she becomes a strong, confident, awesome globetrotter who is easily a welcome addition to the TARDIS...but she instantly leaves right as she gets interesting.  This season's very loose ark is involving a man simply known as Mr. Saxon and figuring out exactly who he is.

2006 Christmas Special
The Runaway Bride

Picking up exactly where Doomsday left off, the Doctor is confused by the sudden appearance of a woman in a wedding dress.  The woman, Donna Noble, accuses the Doctor of kidnapping her and opens to TARDIS door to find they are in space in-flight.  The Doctor takes her back to Earth where the robot santas attack once more and take Donna hostage.  The Doctor uses the TARDIS to fly next to the car holding Donna and rescues her.  He takes her to her wedding where he meets her fiance Lance whom Donna worked with when she fell for him.  The Doctor watches the video of Donna disappearing from the wedding and realizes she must have injected huon particles and was attracted to the huon particles in the TARDIS in her overly emotional state.  He then also realizes the robot santas can track huon particles as a Christmas Tree begins attack the guests.  The Doctor stops the tree and tracks the robot santas to a ship orbiting the Earth which quickly goes missing.  Having learned that Donna's work is owned by the Torchwood Instititue, the Doctor heads there with Lance and Donna to discover a secret underground tunnel beneath the Thames River in which huon particles are being created as well as a large hole into the center of the Earth..  Suddenly a large spider-like alien appears ad introduces herself as the Empress of the Racknoss, a species wiped out by the Time Lords.  Lance also reveals to have been in league with the Empress and had been feeding Donna huon particles to help her revive her race.  The Doctor and Donna escape and use the TARDIS to travel back to the creation of the world where they find the first piece at the center of Earth was a Racknoss ship.  The Empress plans to use the huon particles to revive her race.  With Donna gone, she force feeds Lance the particles and sends them below waking up her "children."  The Doctor reappears and asks the Empress to allow him to take them to a planet where they won't kill anyone.  When she refuses he causes an explosion draining the Thames into the hole and drowning the reawakened Racknoss.  The Empress returns to her ship but it is destroyed by the military on "Mr. Saxon's" orders.  The Doctor offers for Donna to travel with him but she refuses.  He takes her home and heads for the stars.

When it comes to Christmas episodes, about half of them are really great and the others are just ok.  This is a great one.  Catherine Tate as Donna Noble is absolutely hilarious in this episode and it's no wonder that we'll see her return as a regular companion next season.  One negative is the reappearance of the robot santas.  They didn't really make a lot of sense in The Christmas Invasion, and they certainly don't make any more sense now.  The show was wise to jettison them after this appearance.  Still a solid episode though and well worth watching!

Episode 1
Smith and Jones

Medical student Martha Jones is heading to work at the hospital where she encounters the Doctor disguised as a patient under the name John Smith.  Suddenly, the people in the hospital are in shock as the hospital has been transported to the moon and three alien ships arrive.  The ships are piloted by the Judoon, intergalactic police for hire who are looking for an alien criminal that is hiding in the hospital; they begin cataloging everyone who is human and moving on.  The Doctor reveals to Martha that he is an alien and that he fears the Judoon will execute everyone for unknowingly harboring a fugitive.  Meanwhile an elderly woman reveals herself to be the alien and sucks the blood out of the hospital director so that she can pass as a human to the Judoon's scanners.  The Doctor and Martha run across the body of the director and realize the criminal is still out there.  Stalling for time, the Doctor kisses Martha so the scan shows traces of non-human forcing them to do a full scan.  The Doctor discovers the old woman modifying the MRI machine to destroy all life on the Moon and the half of the Earth facing the moon at the time.  Pretending to be a scared human, the Doctor tricks the alien into sucking out his own blood.  When the Judoon arrive, Martha uses their scanner on the woman who registers non-human.  The Judoon execute the woman and leave the hospital.  Martha revives the Doctor and the hospital is returned to Earth.  That night, the Doctor shows up and asks Martha to join him for just one trip in the TARDIS as a thank you.  She accepts.

As far as companion intro episodes go, this one is pretty great!  The Judoon were an interesting inclusion to the world of Doctor Who.  The hunt for the criminal as well as the ticking clock of all the oxygen being depleted (which I didn't mention) made for this a very exciting story.  My problem was something I mentioned in the intro which is Martha's motivations for a good half or more of this season; she was falling for the Doctor.  We just lost Rose and I didn't want to see any sort of repeat.  Still a pretty solid episode.

Episode 2
The Shakespeare Code

The Doctor takes Martha to London 1599 to see Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe Theatre.  At the conclusion, Shakespeare announces that a sequel is in the world called Love's Labour's Won, however a young witch uses a voodoo doll to force Shakespear to declare the sequel will be shown the following evening.  As this sequel is "the lost play" The Doctor and Martha investigate by heading to the inn where Shakespeare is staying.  While there, the Master of Revels barges in insulted that he hasn't seen the script and declares the play will never proceed.  The witch with the assistance of two older witches create a voodoo doll of that man and drown him in the streets.  That same night the young witch uses a bewitched marionette to force Shakespeare to write a particular strange sequence as the final paragraph to the play before falling asleep.  The next morning, the Doctor questions why the Globe has 14 sides and they go to visit the architect who is being held at Bethlem Asylum.  Eventually finding out that the witches had forced him to make the Globe in that shape, one of the witches appears and kills the architect.  The Doctor has now identified them as Carrionites, a species who use the power of words to manipulate psychic energies creating "magic."  The Doctor sends Shakespeare to stop the play but is too late as the words spoken within the globe allow for the entire Carrionite race to return to the world from their exile.  The Doctor tells Shakespeare that he is most likely the only one to come up with words powerful enough to banish them back into exile; Shakespeare comes up with some lines on the fly and they work to send the Carrionites back and trap the three on Earth inside their crystal ball.

This one is pretty fantastic.  I love almost everything about this from the witches to Shakespeare acting like a sort of rock star, to the Doctor being angry with the Asylum guards for mistreating the mentally ill.  There were two tiny parts of this story that I also found really great.  The first is that Shakespeare was such a genius with words that the Doctor's Psychic Paper didn't even work on the man...and he was able to figure out Martha was from the future and the Doctor an alien without being told.  The second is Martha, who is the first black companion, questions if she will be alright in the past as she's "not exactly white."  To this the Doctor just responds that she should act like she owns the place and everything will be fine.  Check this one out.

Episode 3
Gridlock

The Doctor decides to stretch the definition of one trip with Martha and since he took her to the past it's time to take her to the future.  He takes her to New Earth like he did with Rose; a fact that Martha is annoyed by.  However they land in a sort of under city several years after he arrived with Rose.  Almost instantly, Martha is kidnapped by a couple and taken to The Motorway.  The Doctor follows to find bumper to bumper hovering cars in an enclosed roadway filled with exhaust fumes.  He is quickly picked up by a couple who explain they barely move a few feet every week or so and have been on the motorway for years.  Martha wakes up with her captors who explain they needed her to get to the express lane (3 or more people) but upon arriving there, they begin to hear strange voices.  Tired of this nonsense, the Doctor begins dropping down to the bottom layer of cars in order to find Martha while a cat nun starts to follow him.  At the bottom, he discovers a group of crab-like aliens known as Macra have been breeding in the pollution and are killing anything that enters the fast lane.  The cat nun finds the Doctor and teleports him to the surface of the planet; there are bodies lying everywhere.  Several years prior, a plague hit New Earth killing anyone it touched so the leaders trapped people in the under city and motorway in an attempt to save them from death.  The Face of Boe is also there to help the Doctor by using the last of his life energy to re-open the motorway allowing everyone freedom.  Martha finally makes it back to the Doctor who is with the Face of Boe as he utters his last words.  "You are not alone."

This is a weird episode with a lot of random funny characters.  What I really want to talk about here is the Macra.  Now the Macra haven't been seen since the 2nd Doctor's time frame and they were very different back then.  They were fully sentient intelligent beings who were about as tall as a bus.  Here they have not only tripled in size but their intelligence was reduced to that of a mindless beast of instinct.  Now I wouldn't mind seeing how species can change over time but this is literally the only time we've ever seen any sort of significant change in an alien race.  It's like they just needed something to be threatening and pulled the Macra out of a hat to make Classic Fans smile at (or be annoyed by) the reference.  It's also interesting to see future stories where random bits of the past become prominent.  Here the entire population sings The Old Rugged Cross every evening.  It's... odd.  If it sounds interesting then give it a watch.

Episode 4 and 5
Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

The TARDIS lands in 1930 as the Empire State Building is nearing completion.  They notice a news article about disappearances in Hooverville located at Central Park and investigate.  The leader of Hooverville, Solomon, tells them more about the disappearances but a man shows up offering jobs.  The Doctor, Martha, Solomon, and a young man named Frank take the job.  They are sent to the sewers to clear out rubble but along the way they find organic alien matter that the Doctor takes to analyze later.  Eventually the group run into mutated pig slaves and flee for their lives.  Frank is captured by the pig slaves but the others escape up a ladder and into a theatre where they meet a showgirl named Tallulah whose boyfriend had gone missing as well.  The Doctor begins to analyze the organic material when Martha sees a pig slave watching Tallulah's performance and gives chase where she is captured by pig slaves.  The Doctor and Tallulah follow and find the pig slave watching her was her boyfriend Lazlo.  The Doctor and Lazlo continue through the sewers and encounter a Dalek confirming the Doctor's suspicions.  They eventually encounter the Cult of Skaro from Doomsday and find Martha and Frank with them.  Martha asks the Daleks what their plan is and they reveal to be attempting a Dalek-human hybrid to strengthen the Dalek race.  Dalek Sec then conducts the experiment on himself and becomes the first human dalek.

The Doctor intervenes and frees Martha and Frank as they flee back to Hooverville.  Dalek Caan gives chase but Dalek Sec demands the Doctor be brought back alive.  The other Daleks question their leaders abilities now that he is not pure Dalek.  Dalek Sec then asks the Doctor to help him create more hybrids from the brain dead humans they have captured; he believes the Daleks need that bit of humanity in order to be a better race.  The Doctor agrees and offers to take these new Daleks to a planet of their own and Dalek Sec is happy to agree.  However the other Daleks turn on their leader and capture him, but the Doctor escapes.  The Daleks modify the work the Doctor had done to make these new humans into thinking like a pure Dalek.  The Doctor climbs to the top of the Empire State Building to remove the material required to start the experiment but is too late as lightning strikes the tower (and the Doctor) sending the required power and information below. The human Daleks awaken and are ready to exterminate.  The Daleks and human Daleks track down the Doctor.  The Daleks order his extermination but the human daleks refuse; by the Doctor being attached to the mechanism, a tiny bit of Time Lord was also put into these humans and they turn on the Daleks killing all but Dalek Caan who performed an emergency temporal shift. 

I wish I could really pinpoint what it is about this two parter that I don't care for that much.  The idea of it is fantastic.  A race of hate-filled beings suddenly wanting to be more human to strengthen themselves and becoming kind in the process is great.  There's just something about this that is weird and sometimes kind of stupid.  Maybe it's the pointless theatre scenes, maybe it's the weird makeup, maybe it's the random pigs that make no sense... I don't honestly know.  It's not the worst that the show has to offer by any means but it's also just not really good either.  Maybe you'll like it more than I did.

Episode 6
The Lazarus Experiment

The Doctor returns Martha home but decides to stay when he notices an 80 year old man say he is going to "change what it means to be human" on live TV.  That night they go to see what Lazarus was talking about and find that he has created a machine to rejuvenate the body back to a previous point in time.  Lazarus steps in the machine and emerges as a 30 year old with his memories intact.  The Doctor has his suspicious about the machine's side effects and begins snooping around.  Elsewhere, Lazarus is talking with his partner when he suddenly starts to mutate and kills the woman by sucking out her life force.  The Doctor using DNA samples from when Lazarus kissed Martha's hand find his DNA is unstable and changing.  Lazarus returns to human form and takes Tish, Martha's sister who works for him, to the roof.  The Doctor and Martha head to the roof where all three see Lazarus transform into a strange scorpion-like creature and give chase.  They manage to escape by hiding in Lazarus' machine and reversing the polarity to knock him out.  An ambulance arrives to carry him off but he transforms once more and kills the drivers before running into a nearby cathedral.  He cannot stop his transformations and so Tish and Martha lead him into the bell tower while the Doctor modifies the pipe organ.  With Lazarus in the bell tower, the Doctor plays the organ which interferes with Lazarus DNA and he falls to his death.  The Doctor invites Martha along as a full companion and she accepts.  As they leave, Martha's mother leaves a message on her answering machine warning her about the Doctor and that a representative of Mr. Saxon had told her terrible things about the man she was traveling with..

The most interesting thing about this episode is the form that Lazarus takes and the Doctor's explanation of it  The Doctor explains that the scorpion-like creature was an evolutionary possibility for the human race that was rejected and the machine made his normal form unstable so he reverted to some other possibility.  Honestly not a bad episode.

Episode 7
42

The TARDIS receives a distress call from a spacecraft that is slowly falling into a nearby sun with only 42 minutes left.  Within minutes of arriving, the Doctor and Martha are separated from the TARDIS by heat shields due to the rising temperature on the ship.  The engines have malfunctioned and the cockpit is behind 30 deadlocked doors.  Martha teams up with a crew member, Riley, to tackle the doors while the Doctor helps repair the engines.  While this is going on, the husband of the captain has become infected with a presence that is raising his body temperature.  When sedation doesn't work he puts on a welding helmet and begins killing crew members with intense heat before infecting another member of the crew.  This second infected tracks down Martha and Riley trapping them in an escape pod and sending it off into the sun.  The Doctor learns of this and goes to save them by activating a magnetic recall device.  He looks into the sun while doing this and becomes infected himself.  It is then that he learns the sun is a living being and the ship had used a scoop on the sun to refuel the ship and had stolen the sun's heart.  It is the sun trying to reclaim it's body parts that is causing the ship to malfunction.  The Doctor tries to freeze himself to stop regeneration and the captain orders the fuel be dumped before finding her infected husband and sending the pair of them out of the airlock.  Martha and Riley finally get through the doors and dump the fuel.  This allows the ship's engines to re-start and the Doctor to return to normal.

This was honestly an exciting mystery.  It was interesting to see the possessed people growling "burn with me" throughout the episode and it really made you question exactly what was going on.  It was good to see Martha being a true companion and not just along for the ride.  We also get a taste that something bizarre is up with this Mr. Saxon character though we won't see what's going on fully till the finale.  This is a solid episode and well worth your time.

Episodes 8 and 9
Human Nature / The Family of Blood

The Doctor and Martha are on the run from The Family of Blood who intend to take away the Doctor's Time Lord lifespan in order to prolong their own lives.  They seem to be unable to outrun them, so the Doctor uses a device known as a chameleon arch to transform himself into a human and hide his Time Lord essence in a pocket watch.  He hopes to hide from the Family until their lives have been extinguished... which would only be a few months.  He programs the TARDIS to find a time and place where he can easily fit in and transforms.  The TARDIS takes them to 1913 where the very human John Smith (the Doctor) begins working as a school teacher for boys with Martha working as a maid.  John keeps the strange pocket watch in his room but doesn't question why.  John continues to have strange dreams of his adventures as the Doctor and starts writing them down in an Impossible Journal.  Eventually John falls in love with the school nurse, Joan Redfurn.  The Family of Blood have tracked the TARDIS to Earth as a young student with ESP abilities locates the pocket watch and takes it for himself.  The Family possess four people, including a student at the school and sense the Doctor's presence with Timothy briefly opens the pocket watch and sees visions of the Doctor's past and future memories.  The Family track down John (who has no idea what's going on) and demand that he change back into a Time Lord or watch as Martha and Joan are killed.  Timothy opens the pocket watch a second time which distracts the Family and allows everyone to get out safely.

John fortifies the school with the boys who have had military training as Martha and Joan try to find the pocket watch but cannot find it.  The Family starts to attack the school with an army of animated scarecrows as John, Joan, and Martha escape to an empty house in the village.  There, Timothy meets up with them and gives them back the pocket watch.  When the Family discover that John has escaped, they begin to bomb the town from their ship.  Martha and Joan try to convince John to use the watch to save everyone.  John breaks down.  He doesn't want to become a man who could never be with Joan.  He doesn't want to become a man who never even thought that he might fall in love as a human.  Joan and John then share a vision from the pocket watch of the life and happiness they would have if he remained human.  John then makes his way to the ship and after stumbling around, offers the pocket watch to the Family in exchange for the village's safety.  They agree and open the pocket watch only to find it empty.  John had already transformed back into the Doctor and his "fumbling" actually activated the ship's self destruct.  The Doctor then captures all four members of the family.  He had hidden out of a kindness but his kindness was over and he decided to punish them for all of eternity in various and horrendous ways.  The Doctor returns to Joan and asks if she wants to join him.  She refuses and reprimands him for ever coming there as people may have never died if he hadn't chosen to come there.  The Doctor leaves John's journal with her as he and Martha depart.

This two parter is good... VERY good.  It was great to see David Tennant playing a normal person.  It was also heartbreaking to see him so in love with Joan and having to choose to be something that he didn't want to be in order to save people.  It's a beautiful story.  I also want to point to this episode as far as the Doctor's cruelty.  People and the show itself can forget the Doctor's wrath and occasional cruelty... something that the Twelfth Doctor has done well to remind us of.  While the 10th Doctor next season will call himself "the man who never would" here we see him tossing someone into the creation explosion of a new galaxy, trapping a man in dense chains, trapping a girl inside every mirror in existence, and freezing a boy permanently in time and making him work as a scarecrow.  Granted the torture they had handed out to people throughout their lives most likely made this whole thing justifiable but.... that sort of extreme measure is scary. 

Animated Special
The Infinite Quest

An alien tyrant named Baltazar has decided to crush Earth into diamonds when the Doctor and Martha show upon his ship in the TARDIS.  Eventually the Doctor causes a strange fungus to begin eating the ship causing it to rust.  The Doctor then frees Baltazar's robot bird Caw who saves Baltazar as the Doctor and Martha go back to the TARDIS.  At some point later, Caw takes the TARDIS to his home world and provides Martha with a pin for her help saving his life.  He then provides the Doctor with a data chip which is supposed to have coordinates to The Infinite, an impossibly ancient space ship which legend says can give you your hearts desire. The Doctor isn't interested until he mentions Baltazar has a duplicate and is also off to find the Infinite.  The Doctor and Martha then use the data chip to find coordinates to the next data chip and so on.  Their adventure leads them to a sand world where a woman and a group of skeletons are liberating oil.  Eventually the woman escapes but is murdered with her data chip left behind.  They find the next data chip is in the possession of a gun running lizard alien on a planet where humans and insects are at war.  Eventually the lizard is also murdered and his chip is located.  The next segment leads them to a frozen prison planet where the robotic leader of the prison has been tossed into a cell with an inmate (in possession of the chip) running the jail.  Eventually he too is killed but when they go to retrieve his chip, Baltazar shows up riding Caw. Baltazar reveals that the pin given to Martha was a tracking device and forces the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS to the Infinite.  As he does so, Baltazar tosses the Doctor out with Martha's pin which turns out to be Caw's son.  Martha and Baltazar arrive at the Infinite which turns out to only be causing illusions of what your hearts desire is.  The Doctor arrives having spent 3 years raising Caw's son and reprogramming him to take Baltazar to prison.  The Infinite breaks up as the Doctor and Martha head off on their journey.

This one is really bizarre and could only be done with animation in all honesty.  It's like they had a bunch of interesting ideas but not enough material to make a full episode so they slapped the whole thing in here.  It's pretty entertaining even though ti's kind of absolutely insane.  It kind of reminds me of the William Hartnell story The Chase with all the various locations and bizarre things going on.  While this isn't the definite placement of this story chronologically, this is where I like to put it as Martha is a full companion at this point... or at least she seems to be.  If you can track it down, and are a fan of the 10th Doctor and Martha then give it a try. 

Episode 10
Blink

A young lady named Sally Sparrow is photographing an abandoned house when she sees creepy angel statues and finds a note from the Doctor in the 1960's behind the peeling wallpaper which warns her about the Weeping Angels.  The next day Sally and her friend Kathy go back to the house, but there is a knock on the door.  Sally goes to the door as Kathy suddenly disappears and the angel statue has moved.  The man at the door is older than Sally and Kathy but claims to be Kathy's grandson who was told to show up at that house at that exact time with a letter from his grandmother.  The letter is from Kathy who says she suddenly found herself in 1920 and eventually married and lived a peaceful life.  Sally sees a strange key being held by an angel statue and takes it as she goes to find Kathy's brother Larry at his DVD shop.  Sally tells Larry that Kathy has "gone away for awhile" but notices that he has been documenting a strange Easter Egg on several unrelated DVDs.  It's a man in the 60's calling himself The Doctor having half of a conversation with the viewer.  Kathy then decides to take the key to the police station where she meets Detective Billy Shipton who informs her that there have been several disappearances at that house and one of the latest ones was a locked police box.  Sally leaves but remembers the key so she returns to the police station to find that both Billy and the TARDIS are gone.  She receives a call from a much older Billy who is dying in the hospital.  He had seen the angel statues approaching the TARDIS and suddenly found himself in 1969 where he met the Doctor.  Billy tells her to check the list of DVDs and passes away.  The DVDs are all DVDs that she owns.  She takes Larry and a portable DVD player to the abandoned house where she watches the easter egg and seems to have a conversation with the Doctor who reveals he has a full manuscript of their conversation because Larry was writing it down.  The Doctor explains that the angels are creatures who cannot move when they are being looked at but are lightning fast and will send you back in time to feed off your time energy.  He then asks Sally to take the DVD to the TARDIS so that he and Martha can escape 1969.  As they head for the TARDIS the angels start attacking and causing light failure.  The pair enter the TARDIS which recognizes the DVD and flies off without the pair...however that has caused the angels to look at each other and be permanently locked.  Later, Sally sees the Doctor out in town and provides him with the information and manuscript as it hasn't happened for him yet.

This is one of those fantastic episodes that come around less often than they should.  It's one of the best episodes the show has ever produced.  With the increase of episodes, in Season 2 they had a Doctor Lite episode in Love and Monsters which was atrocious.  Here it's done right....practically perfectly.  The introduction of the Weeping Angels is also amazing as they are one of the creepiest creatures to ever have been created in all of Doctor Who.  This is something everyone should watch.

Episodes 11, 12, and 13
Utopia / The Sound of Drums /
The Last of the Time Lords

The TARDIS is refueling at the rift in Cardiff when the Doctor notices Captain Jack rushing towards them having used the Doctor's severed hand from The Christmas Invasion to track him.  He tries to take off but Jack latches himself to the TARDIS and goes along for the ride.  The TARDIS tries to shake him off and lands way farther in the future than they should have been... the end of the universe.  Jack falls off the TARDIS dead from the flight but immediately comes back to life.  It seems that when Rose brought him back to life in The Parting of the Ways she made him a fixed point in time so that he could never actually die... or at least it would be an extremely long time.  The trio find themselves on a planet where the last remaining human beings in the universe are trying to leave on a rocket ship to find Utopia.  However the rocket isn't functioning and the bumbling Professor Yana can't figure it out.  As Yana can't figure it out and keeps having bizarre headaches, the Doctor notices  that he is holding a strange looking pocket watch.  He then decides to help Yana with the rocket.  Yana hadn't noticed he had a pocket watch and opens it as the rocket takes flight.  Yana begins to remember who he is and kills his assistant proclaiming his real name.. The Master.  The Master is shot by his assistant in her last moments and hops on the Doctor's TARDIS.  He regenerates into a younger man and the Doctor begs him to open the doors as they are the last two remaining time lords in existence.  The Master taunts him and takes off but not before the Doctor used his Sonic Screwdriver to lock the TARDIS coordinates.

Jack uses his time vortex manipulator to return all three of them to 2007 where Martha remembers hearing the Master's voice.  As it turns out, the Master is Mr. Saxon who is now Prime Minister of England.  The Master then kidnaps Martha's family hoping to lure out the Doctor.  At the same time, The Master lets the world know that an alien race known as the Toclafanes have approached him and want to help Planet Earth but wish to hold a meeting with the World Leaders on board a flying ship the next day.  The Doctor, Martha, and Jack sneak on board the ship to find the TARDIS has been modified to become a paradox machine for unknown purposes.  At the world-wide reveal of the Toclafanes, the Master reveals that they are working for him and orders them to kill thousands of people on Earth.  When the Doctor finally arrives on the bridge, he is captured and the Master then utilizes some spare tech from the Lazarus Experiment to age the Doctor several hundred years.  The Doctor hands Martha Jack's time manipulator, whispers something to her and sends her off.  One year passes as the Master is now ruler of the Earth along with his companion/wife who regrets joining with her husband.  Martha has been traveling the world supposedly finding pieces to a weapon against time lords, but has actually been telling everyone about the Doctor and to think about him on a particular day.  While out she discovers the Toclafanes are actually the severed heads of the humans from Utopia trapped in a metal shell, hence the need for a paradox machine.  Eventually Martha is captured and brought before the Master but the Doctor has been slowly integrating himself into a psychic network the Master had laid down.  When the whole world thought about the Doctor, he was able to gain immense psychic power and take down the Master while Jack uses the distraction to dismantle the paradox machine.  This causes time to revert to the moment the paradox machine had opened... the last year had never happened though the people on the ship would remember since they were at "the eye of the storm."  The Master's wife then shoots him and he dies refusing to regenerate and live on as a prisoner of the Doctor.  The Master's body is burned but his ring falls to the ground and is picked up by an unknown person.  Jack leaves the TARDIS to start back up Torchwood as a group for good and worries about what he'll look like at the eventual end of his life; he then tells the Doctor that he used to have a nickname... The Face of Boe!  Martha then decides to leave the TARDIS as she is sure the Doctor will never reciprocate her feelings, but provides him with a cell phone so that she can stay in touch.  The Doctor leaves Earth for more adventures.

This is a pretty exciting three parter.  It was great to see the Master once again and see the dynamic of these two evolving some.  You get more of a sense that they were actually good friends at one point before they went their separate ways.  One strange decision to make with the modern series is that the Master is legitimately insane this time around.  I realize that they give a real explanation for the headaches and drumming sound later but.... the Master was never quite this.  Sure he was evil and his plans sometimes made no sense but... this is more like The Riddler cosplaying as The Master.  Don't get me wrong.  I still love this version of the Master but it's just not the same as the Classic Show.  Also, the last episode gave us the Martha we had been wanting from the very beginning.  She was smart, amazing, and freaking tough.  This was a companion worthy of the TARDIS....then she leaves.  Despite any belly-aching I've said, this three parter is a pretty good watch and a great end to a pretty good season. 

Conclusion

That was Series Three of New Who.  In many aspects is reminds me a tiny bit of the first season mostly because I didn't care for it as much the first time I watched it.  However upon a second viewing, I loved most of it.  While Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks is kind of stupid there is far more good this season than bad.  Human Nature/The Family of Blood and Blink are all absolutely fantastic episodes that everyone should watch.  While many Classic Who fans have a real issue with this portrayal of The Master, I truly enjoyed it.  It was something different that made the Master a very unique foe.  All in all this is pretty great and continues to show why David Tennant will always be considered one of the best Doctors.  Please join me again as we continue to examine all of Doctor Who.

This is Ghost, fading into the darkness

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"You can be a professional space explorer.  Let Uexplore provide you with a cheap but functional spaceship equipped with everything you could possibly need on an alien planet."

Ghost here, thanks for joining me.

I don't talk about indie games very often.  It's not that I don't like indie games or won't give them a chance.  It's more about the fact that most indie games kind of need to be talked about in a particular time frame. The indie world can be very fickle and since I only make video game related content once every 3 weeks, that fickle nature it not in my favor.  If an indie game is breathtaking everyone will know about it within a week.  Same is true if an indie game is horrible garbage.  In order for me to cover an indie game it has to be something that's pretty fantastic or pretty terrible but hasn't gotten a whole lot of media attention at least in the avenues I pay attention to.  That's where this game lies.

Full disclosure here, I didn't seek out this game on my own.  I had actually only seen this thing mentioned once and that was an official trailer for the thing I saw when diving through YouTube one day.  However, the Humble Bundle did a Nintendo bundle and for only 16 bucks I walked away with 12 games or more? I don't remember exactly, but this was one of those games.  I tried out all of them and this was one I just had to cover.  So let's put on our space suits and hop in our affordable spaceship and see what this is all about.

The Plot

You have just watched an infomercial for UExplore.  UExplore is a company that is providing you with the opportunity to explore a new planet and claim part of it as your own before returning to Earth.  It's affordable and above all, safe with a 0% problem rating.  This, of course, means that when you wake up from your journey you have found that the transport ship has crash landed on the alien planet and you are the only survivor.  There is a distress beacon nearby but it is nonfunctional.  You must now pilot your damaged vehicle across the alien terrain in order to find a functional UExplore distress beacon.  However the pathway is treacherous with extreme heat and cold, strange puzzles, and an alien ship that had crashed landed previously with a multitude of sentry robots guarding the area with extreme prejudice.  Eventually as your systems begin shutting down, you find a distress beacon that is functional and go into a cryogenic freeze until Earth can rescue you.  However, at the UExplore headquarter, thousands of faxes are coming in from others having the same issue but nobody is there to rescue them.

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... and that's it!  The majority of the game is actually based around puzzle solving, navigation, and gameplay.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing so long as what we are given is enjoyable.

Gameplay

Affordable Space Adventures is an exploration game in which you use the WiiU's gamepad to maneuver the space ship seen on the TV screen from one area to another while avoiding traps and sentry units.  There are several aspects of the WiiU's gameplad you must utilize in order to accomplish this.  First would be the buttons and sticks on the gamepad itself.  These do things such as press the gas and break, steer the ship, change different types of landing gear, shoot off flares, and shine the scanner and flashlight in different directions.  Another aspect is the gyroscopic controls within the gamepad itself.  There are some areas which are slanted and would not allow passage through normally so you must turn the gamepad itself so that the ship can travel at an angle through tight places.

However it is the 3rd part of the gamepad that is the most complex, and that would be the touch screen.  The touch screen is basically like your control panel in the cockpit.  From there you can modify how much thrust you are putting out, how much stabilizer to utilize for your flight, whether or not to engage the mass generator to sink or float at ease, utilizing a battery backup, and several other functions like whether to use the fuel engine or the electric engine.  Why are these things important?  Well remember those sentries I talked about earlier?  These things have a radius of scanning for anything coming by.  However, these sentries are looking for certain aspects of your ship.  These sentries can look for heat, electrical signature, sound, or a combination of them all.  If your ship is producing more than what that particular sentry deems acceptable then it's dime for death's sweet embrace.  You can use your scanner on each of the sentries to see what they are looking for and adjust the features of your ship so that you can pass by undetected.  There are also environmental hazards and puzzles that you must get past by utilizing only certain parts of your ship as well.

What's Good About It?

The atmosphere of the game was something that instantly held my attention.  If I was really using my brain at that moment I would have seen the twist coming as soon as they mentioned a 0% incident rate.  However my expectations were different than the reality of the game.  First off, I was under the assumption that there would be a training level or something to get us used to the machine first before setting out on the alien planet.  I didn't realize that we would be there the second the infomercial ended.  Secondly the trailer for this game as well as the opening infomercial were such a stark contrast to what the game actually consisted of that it truly threw me for a loop.   Those two things were like this

Then when the game started properly...BAM!!

Harsh reality right in your face about what is actually going on.  It honestly surprised and jarred me a little bit and that's just wonderful.  Now some of the areas in the game are quite gorgeous, but this stark contrast is very welcome.

The second great thing about this game is it's use of the WiiU Gamepad.  While many developers shy away from a lot of Nintendo's gimmicks and shenanigans, these guys have accepted it full force and have utilized every single aspect of the gamepad so perfectly.  There is literally not a single button or portion of the gamepad that I didn't end up utilizing.  The closest thing to this is possibly... Mario Kart 8 maybe?  It's rare for a 3rd party developer to embrace the gimmicks of a Nintendo Console but it's even more rare for a developer to not only embrace the gimmicks but provide an intuitive control scheme to boot.  Somehow these guys did it and I enjoyed actually using the gamepad the way it was most likely intended to be used.

What's Bad About It?

If you're looking for an easy game then look elsewhere bro.  This game is extremely difficult once you get past level 16 or so.  For a game that has no combat and is mostly just puzzles and pushing buttons I wasn't prepared for the extreme level of difficulty some of these levels provided.  As you can see from the gamepad picture above there are 10+ different buttons that all control different aspects of the ship's output and many of these sentries require certain levels to be so incredibly low that there is one and only one way to get past them... and good luck finding out which combination actually works.  I'd say a good half of the game I ended up having to look up on YouTube to figure out how in the name of all things holy I'm supposed to get past this stuff.  I'm all for trial and error but when I spend 40 minutes trying to get past one set of sentries alone?  That's just too difficult.  If it's not sentries then it's something cryptic.  In the last level I kept freezing to death.  How exactly was I supposed to know that landing in the snow was supposed to raise the internal temperature of my ship? Last time I checked, snow was COLD...whatever.

Speaking of difficulty, here's something else that's honestly more of a nitpick than anything else.  I get annoyed when a game decides to make things difficult by slowly adding more things that you have to worry about...then once everything is given to you, everything that you've come to rely on gets taken away from you again.  That's exactly what this game does.  At first you only have your fuel engine and a couple of small features.  As you progress through the levels more and more of your ship becomes available until you are in the heart of the alien space craft when you have a fully functional machine.  After that level, however, your machine is damaged severely and all of your systems including stabilization start shutting down level by level until you are left with nothing but throttle and temperature control for the final level.  It's not necessarily a terrible choice but it's just one that annoys me.

Conclusion

Affordable Space Adventures was honestly a treat when I wasn't getting overly angry at the difficulty involved with some challenges.  It was a surprise that I'm glad came with my Humble Bundle.  It wasn't a particularly long game at only 38 levels, but it was still a quality experience.  The game is regularly $20 and if you have some disposable income, consider tossing it their way.  I'm personally glad I didn't have to pay $20 bucks for it but that's because I tend to be a Scrooge with my money at times.  I honestly do recommend it even if it's just for the utilization of the gamepad.  Check it out and go on your own space adventure!

This is Ghost, fading into the darkness.

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If you want to see my other Video Game discussions and reviews, click here!

Whovian Chatter: The Tennant Years Series Two

Ghost here, thanks for joining.

I'm going to be examining Doctor Who... every single episode.  I'm going to take you on a journey through the 50+ years worth of this show, showcasing the good and the bad along the way.  For each episode I'm going to give you a very brief rundown of the plot, how good/bad the story is, and anything interesting about the episode.  Basically I'll just talk about whatever comes to mind for each of them.  These will be a more in-depth overview of the series as a whole so you can see which stories or episodes (if any) you want to check out for yourself.  Today I'm going to be talking about

The Tenth Doctor

David Tennant

Series Two

Before we start talking about the season itself, I would like to point out a few things regarding the seasons in particular.  Beginning in 2005 they started making mini episodes that were around five minutes a piece.  Most of these are just fun little romps with the characters and I shall be skipping them.  Some I will talk about either because they are particularly interesting or they give a little bit of back story to the episode immediately following it.  Secondly, it was decided that there would be a Christmas Special every year that would air on Christmas Day.  This cause a few things such as the companion lite or Doctor lite episodes (episodes that don't feature the companion or Doctor that much) to compensate for the longer filming time.  Also these Christmas Specials are technically not considered part of the actual season in most cases and can fit with either the season before or after it.  I will be placing them wherever I feel they are most important rather than where the DVDs or streaming sites had placed them.

Series Two ran from April 11, 2006 to July 4, 2006 and contained thirteen episodes.  Having learned from the previous season, this season seemed a bit more consistent and the show benefited from that stability.  It was time for a brand new Doctor with a new lease on life.  Rather than be war-torn about the Time War, he was now dedicated to making sure that nobody else would ever have to endure the hardships he had all the while keeping a smile on his face.  This season's story arch revolves around the secretive organization known as Torchwood which actually debuted in the Christmas Special preceding this season's official first episode.  Just like the season prior, Torchwood only really shows up in a couple episodes before the finale making it just a very loose story arch. 

2005 Children in Need Special
Born Again

After recapping the events which lead up to the Doctor's regeneration, the new 10th Doctor continues to pilot the TARDIS to Barcelona.  Rose doesn't believe that he is actually the Doctor but finally comes to that realization when the Doctor reminds her that the first word he ever said to her was "run."  Since he can't change back into his previous incarnation, he asks if she would like to go home.  She doesn't answer so he changes course to her home on Christmas Eve 2005.  Suddenly, he starts talking gibberish and regeneration energy comes out of his mouth.  The regeneration is going wrong and he's going into a mania which manifests itself as a severe need for speed.  The Doctor increases the speed of the TARDIS as it plummets down the time vortex towards Christmas.

I didn't know this existed for a long time, and I'm glad I found it.  See from what I was used to, the Doctor regenerated then the next episode is the TARDIS going out of control and Rose saying there was a problem.  Now I could just imagine something weird was going on and left it at that, but now I actually got to see 10 reacting to his new body and have a reason for the out of control TARDIS.

2005 Christmas Special
The Christmas Invasion

It's Christmas Eve 2005 and both Jackie and Mickey hear the TARDIS coming back.  They rush outside to find it out of control and a strange man wishing them Merry Christmas before falling unconscious.  Rose comes out of the TARDIS to inform them that is the Doctor.  They take him to the Tyler's apartment to rest.  Rose and Mickey go out for shopping but are attacked by robotic santas who follow them to the Tyler apartment and radio control a gifted Christmas Tree to attack them.  The Doctor briefly wakes up and stops the tree with his sonic screwdriver before falling unconscious again.  That night, new Prime Minister Harriet Jones was set to do a live broadcast about a probe sent into space, but the probe was picked up by an alien race identifying themselves as Sycorax.  The Sycorax demanded that Earth surrender and then places 1/3rd of the population in hypnosis and on the edge of buildings.  Harriet Jones attempts to negotiate but finds herself and her aides on board the Sycorax ship.  Jackie, Rose, and Mickey try to take supplies and the Doctor to the TARDIS but before Jackie can make a return trip the TARDIS is picked up by the Sycorax.  Rose exists to buy them some time but accidentally knocks over a container of tea which begins to smoke on contact with a part of the ship.  Rose bluffs her way around the Sycorax in enough time that the Doctor recovers (having inhaled the smoke tea.)  The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS, reintroduces himself, and stops the Sycorax blood control on Earth.  He then challenges and defeats the leader of the Sycorax, despite losing and regrowing a hand due to being in the first 15 hours of his regeneration.  He demands the Sycorax leave Earth after teleporting all of them back to the planet.  However, Harriet Jones orders Torchwood to destroy the ship as it was leaving the atmosphere.  The Doctor is furious and when Harriet maintains she did the right thing he simply asks her aide  "Don't you think she looks tired?" and walks off.  That night the Doctor gets his new outfit and watches as Jones tries to fend off rumors on TV about her health.  He and Rose go back to travel the stars.

This is a fantastic episode.  Although the robot santas and the killer Christmas Tree were a bit on the goofy side, everything else about this was brilliant.  The Sycorax were threatening, there was a real mystery in why 1/3rd of the population were on the brink of committing suicide and the whole episode you just want to scream "WAKE UP ALREADY!!!"  When David Tennant finally wakes up and starts being the pop-culture spewing, funny, but furious Doctor that we know and love made waiting the majority of the episode absolutely worth it.  Definitely give this one a watch. 

Episode 1
New Earth

The Doctor has decided to take Rose to New Earth as their first trip partially because his Psychic Paper picked up a message wanting him to visit a hospital there.  Unknown to the Doctor and Rose, someone else is watching them and plans to take Rose's body as her own.  It is Cassandra who's brain survived the events of The End of the World.  The Doctor heads up the elevator to meet with the mysterious caller who it turns out to be the Face of Boe.  While there he notices people are being cured of diseases that the cure hasn't yet been found by common knowledge.  Meanwhile, Rose's elevator is hijacked by Cassandra who uses mind swap technology to project her own brain into Rose's body.  Cassandra then meets up with the Doctor and they investigate behind the scenes where they find the nuns have been creating test tube humans, infecting them with all manner of diseases to try to find a cure, then destroying those made humans.  Accidentally, one of the humans escapes and allows all the other infected people to roam the hospital, severely infecting or killing anyone they come into contact with.  Eventually the Doctor is able to pool all the medicine into a sort of shower and spreads the cure to all of the "new humans."  The Face of Boe thanks the Doctor for coming and says he will reveal a secret to him the next time they meet.  The Doctor then orders Cassandra out of Rose's body and she goes into the body of a young man who, as it turns out, was about to die.  As a kindness, the pair take Cassandra back in time to see herself as a full human before she passes away.

This is a pretty standard episode with an interesting premise.  The greatest part about this episode was Billie Piper being a lot more funny than usual and portraying a different character in Rose's body.  Aside from that it was just a solid episode with nothing overly great or overly bad about it.

Episode 2
Tooth and Claw

The Doctor attempts to take Rose to a concert in 1979 but ends up in 1879 instead where they come across Queen Victoria's carriage.  The Queen asks them to join her as she is heading to the Torchwood Estate, a favorite location of Prince Albert. All are unaware that the estate has been taken over by monks who have brought a werewolf with them and are forcing the owner, Sir Robert, to comply with their wishes to infect the Queen with lycanthropy.  The Doctor soon finds out the plan and takes shelter with Rose, the Queen, and Sir Robert in the library which was made from mistletoe wood to keep the werewolf at bay.  While there, they discover journals which show that the werewolf is actually the remnants of an alien creature who has survived by transferring his essence from one human to another and that Prince Albert as well as Sir Robert have made the estate into a trap to destroy the alien using the Queen's diamond.  Sir Robert sacrifices himself as the Doctor, Rose, and the Queen ready the trap and destroy the werewolf.  The Queen discovers a cut on her hand and swears it to be from a splinter.  She then gives the Doctor and Rose royal titles but banishes them as she is horrified by their connection to this strange world.  In honor of Sir Robert's sacrifice, the Queen orders the creation of Torchwood to stop alien threats.  Rose later questions the cut on the Queen's hand to which the Doctor informs her that all Victoria's children had haemophilia which could very well be a Victorian euphemism for lycanthropy. 

I adore this story.  I'm not sure if it is because the story itself is excellent or it's just because I adore werewolves.  It's always fun to see the Doctor interacting with famous people and this one is just as delightful... even though Rose and the Doctor keep trying to get her to say "we are not amused" which gets a bit old.  It's also interesting to note that the Doctor introduces himself to Queen Victoria as "Doctor James McCrimmon" which is of course the name of the 2nd Doctor's male companion.  If you like werewolf stories then check this one out.

Episode 3
School Reunion

The Doctor under his alias John Smith has started teaching science at a London School with Rose working the caffeteria.  Mickey called them there because the headmaster Mr. Finch's changes were sounding weird but getting exceptional results.  Rose noted that the cafeteria served special chips (french fries) and the oil to make these chips had to be handled while wearing a hazmat suit.  The Doctor noticed that children eating these chips gained super intelligence.  The success of Finch's program had garnered media attention and journalist Sarah Jane Smith had come to investigate.  That night everyone went back to the school to investigate and Sarah Jane stumbled upon the TARDIS where the Doctor, pleased to finally see her again, revealed himself to her.  The four find thirteen bat-like creatures on the headmasters office, then slip out  to Sarah Jane's car to find an inactive version of K-9 whom the Doctor repairs.  K-9 identifies the chip oil as Krillitane oil.   The next day, the Doctor confronts Finch who confirms his identity as a Krillitane.  Sarah Jane and Rose break into the computer room to find the children in a hypnotic state.  The Doctor finds them and discovers that the Krillitanes are attempting to solve the "Skasis Paradigm" which would allow them full control over space and time like a god.  Finch tempts the Doctor to help him and return to the Time Lords in the process but with Sarah Jane's help he refuses and leads the Krillitanes into the kitchen where K-9 has set a trap which destroys himself, the school, and the Krillitanes.  The Doctor asks Sarah Jane to travel with him again but she refuses as she has moved on with her life.  He leaves her another working unit of K-9 and allows Mickey to join them on their adventures.

While the stuff about the Krillitanes and the school are interesting... it all takes a back seat to the fact that Sarah Jane Smith was back.  This could have been about anything or even been stupid and it would still have been worth watching to see a companion we hadn't seen since 1976 on the screen once more.  It helps that the story is fairly unique and strong to back up this amazing reunion of Doctor and companion.  If you are a fan of or at least interested in the classic show at all, this is one you don't want to miss.

Episode 4
The Girl in the Fireplace

The TARDIS materializes on a deserted ship in the far future where Rose, Mickey and the Doctor are confused to find an 18th Century fireplace and on the other side is a girl named Reinette who lives in Paris in 1727.  The Doctor deduces that it is a time window which allows direct access to a particular place and time.  He hits a lever and ends up in Reinette's room but several months later.  While there he discovers a ticking humanoid in fancy dress who disappears to the ship.  The Doctor follows and finds it to be a clockwork android.  The android teleports away and the Doctor returns to Reinette only to find that she is now a young woman who flirts with and kisses the Doctor before departing.  The Doctor then realizes she is actually Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV.  The Doctor, Rose and Mickey wander the ship and find many windows into Reinette's life.  The Doctor the intervenes at one point when he sees another android approaching.  He asks Reinette to order the robot to answer his questions; she does and it obeys.  The androids were in charge of maintaining the ship, but when it was damaged and they did not have the parts, they killed the crew to use their organs in replace of parts.  They have one part left, the brain of Madame de Pompadour.  The androids capture Rose and Mickey, but the Doctor saves them as one android calls the others to him; Reneitte's brian is ready. The robots appear at a ball and capture Reinette locking the time window behind them.  The Doctor can follow but doing so will shatter the time window and all the others linked with the ship.  He does so and talks the androids into shutting down as they cannot reach their ship anymore.  Reinette, however, has a surprise.  She had her fireplace brought piece by piece to the palace and was disconnected from the others.  The Doctor tells her to pick a star and that he would be right back for her.  However despite his almost instant return, seven years has passed for Reinette and she has passed away.  The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, closes the window and flies away from the S. S. Madame de Pompadour.

This is one of the greatest episodes that Doctor Who has ever produced.  To be honest with you it's one of the best episodes of any television show I've seen.  It was surprising, interesting, funny, and brought out a lot of emotion.  I legitimately can't think of a single negative thing to say about this one.  This is one of those episodes that you show people to get them interested in the show because it's practically perfect.  Everyone needs to watch this episode.

Episode 5 and 6
Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

The TARDIS is in flight when it suddenly crashed through a hole in the time vortex and seemingly dies.  The Doctor discovers one single power cell still active and uses some of his life energy to get it to start powering up fully once more.  The trio discover that they are in an alternate universe and have to wait 24 hours for the power cell to recharge so they can go back to their universe.  Rose sees a billboard with her father's face as he hadn't died in that universe as Mickey goes off to see if his grandmother is also still alive in this universe.  Rose and the Doctor notice that the population are all wearing earpod devices from Cybus Industries in order to receive news directly to their brain.  The leader of Cybus, John Lumic, is trying once again to gain approval to place human minds in metal bodies to prolong human life but is shut down by the president.  Unknown to the world, Lumic has already began his experiences on homeless people.  A group of freedom fighters known as the Preachers, know about Lumic's plan and grab Mickey thinking that he is his universe counterpart Rickey and take him to their base.  Mickey and Rickey meet and Mickey joins with them as they plan to infiltrate the Tyler house as Pete Tyler works for Lumic.  The Doctor and Rose have also infiltrated the Tyler house posing as servers for Jackie's birthday party when Cybermen from Lumic appear and begin killing everyone.  The Doctor, Rose, Pete, and the Preachers all meet up and escape as Lumic begins broadcasting that all people are to receive upgrades or be deleted.  The team meet up to take down the Cybermen, but Rickey is killed by a cyberman in the process.  Mickey and a preacher head to Lumic's zeppelin to stop the earpod transmissions as Pete and Rose infiltrate the conversion center with the Doctor and another preacher heading beneath to find Lumic.  Eventually the transmission machine is destroyed and the Doctor disables the inhibitors that are embedded in each Cyberman.  The Cybermen see what they have become and explode on contact taking Lumic with them.  Rose finally admits to Pete that he is her daughter from another universe but he refuses to come with her.  Mickey also sees that Rose no longer needs him as she has the Doctor and chooses to stay behind to take care of Rickey's grandmother and help the preachers take out the remaining Cybermen.  The Doctor and Rose return to their universe.

This two parter is just ok.  It's a decent enough reintroduction to the Cybermen.  The only truly bad thing about this is that... for some reason the Cybermen just aren't that threatening overall.  You may disagree with me but almost every time the Cybermen show up in the new series they just aren't that threatening (with the exception of Nightmare in Silver)  Nothing great or terrible here... it's just ok.  I'll talk about Mickey more in my conclusion.

Episode 7
The Idiot's Lantern

The Doctor has taken Rose to see Elvis live but ends up in the UK accidentally only a few days before Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.  The Doctor notices that far more people than normal have TV sets and that someone has been taken away with a sheet over their head; the car vanishes when they try to follow.  The Doctor and Rose begin asking questions at the house of Tommy Connolly and find that his grandmother is without a face after they recently got a television. Before the Doctor can investigate further police take the woman away.  The Doctor follows but Rose heads to the local TV shop to investigate.  There, Rose meets with an alien known as The Wire who has taken electric form and intends to take the mind and faces of people in order to re-create herself a body; she intends to do this by transmitting to everyone's TV during the coronation.  She steals Rose's face.  Elsewhere, the Doctor has tracked down a holding pen for the faceless ones and speaks with the inspector when the police bring a faceless Rose inside.  The Doctor, Tommy, and the Investigator head to the TV shop and are attacked by The Wire but escape as the Wire heads into a portable TV created by the shop owner who heads to the tv station transmitter.  The Doctor and Tommy create a device from the TV shop and the TARDIS to capture the Wire.  Eventually the Wire is captured within the device and everyone's faces return to their bodies. 

This one is another that falls into the "kind of silly" category.  An electric alien that uses the TV to do stuff to people is an interesting idea.  However, the Wire's chosen form being a kindly woman and having people standing around with no faces was just a little too weird for me.  It's not terrible... just not that great.

Episode 8 and 9
The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit

The TARDIS lands on a space station in the future where the Doctor and Rose go investigating.  They discover some writing on a wall that even the TARDIS cannot translate before meeting up with the crew.  The crew reveal that they are on an impossible planet which is in constant orbit around a black hole (something that shouldn't happen) and that the source of the power holding them there is ten miles below the surface.  Unfortunately as they drill towards the bottom, an earthquake happens and the section containing the TARDIS falls away.  The Doctor and Rose then begin helping the crew as they have no means of escape.  At the same time, a crew member named Toby is being unknowingly possessed and kills another crew member as the translation machines of a group of aliens known as the Ood begin saying things about "the Beast."  The drill breaks through to the source and the Doctor with another crew member, Ida, go to investigate.  The Doctor finds a door in the ground which suddenly opens as all of the Ood become possessed and refer to themselves as the Legion of the Beast killing crew members in the process.  Rose and the main crew escape the Ood through the ventilation shafts as the Beast begins taunting each person with their worst fear and snapping the cable trapping the Doctor and Ida below.  The Doctor then jumps down the pit to find himself saved by an air pocket and able to breathe.  There he finds a large beast in chains and deduces that this is the body of the Beast, the origin for all the evil in all religions.  Since the Beast cannot actually speak the Doctor realizes his consciousness is already free.  The Doctor then sees the writing on the cave wall and notices that if the jars near the Beast are broken, then the planet will sink into the black hole killing the Beast for good.  Up on the station, the surviving crew members, Toby, and Rose are heading away from the planet on a rocket when Toby becomes possessed again.  Seeing the TARDIS had landed nearby, The Doctor smashes the jars as Rose shoots out the window of the rocket sending Toby's body towards the black hole.  With gravity failing, the rocket is being sucked into the black hole, the Doctor used the TARDIS to bring the rocket back to safety and exchange Ida for Rose.

This is basically an updated version of the Jon Pertwee story The Daemons.  As much as I love the Daemons, I do have to say that this is a superior version of this story as it has a space theme, the physics of the planet are intriguing, and there is a real mystery here.  This two parter does an excellent job of letting you think they aren't going to get out alive even though there are more episodes left to the season.  It's not the best of the season but it's pretty dang good.

Episode 10
Love & Monsters

A young man named Elton Pope is presenting a v-log about his interaction with the Doctor and others who have had a run-in with the Doctor.  Elton had a change encounter with the Doctor as a child and has been searching for any information on the man.  He eventually finds Ursula Blake who also had a run-in with the mysterious Doctor and the pair along with three other start a group known as LINDA (London Investigation N Detective Agency) to discuss their experience but eventually the group dissolves into a social gathering of friends.  That changes when a man named Victor Kennedy comes to the meeting and takes over.  Elton is given the task of tracking down Jackie Tyler and trying to find the Doctor through his companion.  Elton quickly finds Jackie and befriends her.  Jackie tries to seduce the young man but when she finds a picture of Rose in his jacket she demands he leave.  Slowly the three other members of LINDA disappear from the group as Ursula and Elton discover Victor is actually an alien known as an Abzorbaloff.  Victor has been slowly absorbing each member of LINDA into his own body and manages to absorb Urusla before Elton's eyes.  Elton flees as Victor gives chase.  Victor has cornered Elton but the TARDIS arrives and Rose comes out to fuss at Elton for bothering her mother.  Victor attempts to absorb Elton but the combined consciousness of the four members stop him and cause him to drop his cane.  Elton breaks the cane and Victor dissolves into the earth.  The Doctor explains to Elton their first meeting was at Elton's house as he was tracking an alien who had unfortunately killed Elton's mother in the process.  Elton finishes his narrative that the Doctor was able to use his sonic screwdriver to keep Ursula's essence alive as a face on the paving stone Victor dissolved into.

This is an abomination.  It's garbage of the worst variety and it is the single worst episode in the entirety of Doctor Who.  I'd rather watch The Twin Dilemma, which was the worst story of the Classic Show, than watch this.  This is the only episode I skip every single time I watch it as it contributes nothing to the overall plot.  My synopsis may not have pointed out all of the bad so let's break it down shall we?  Annoying douche-bag v-logger, group of people goofing about that no one would want to actually spend time with, painfully obvious villain before reveal, alien is just a green double for Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, The Doctor condemns a woman to a life of being an immortal concrete slab with a face, and implied fellatio with said concrete slab.  Never watch this.

Episode 11
Fear Her

The Doctor and Rose land on the opening day of the 2012 London Olympics on a street that the torch is supposed to pass through.  However there is a strange energy on the street and several children have gone missing.  The pair investigate the houses nearby and find the source of the disappearances to be a 12-year-old girl named Chloe who has the ability to trap people inside paper by simply drawing them.  Chloe is possessed by an immature alien known as an Isolus who was lonely and fell to Earth due to a solar flare.  The Isolus is used to traveling with billions and is using Chloe to add people to the mental field to play with.  Since Chloe had a troubled childhood, the Isolus chose her and forced her to draw a large demonic figure of her late father who it is implied abused her.  The Doctor theorizes if they can power up the alien's ship then it will leave, but the alien causes Chloe to draw the TARDIS and Doctor before he can do anything.  Rose finds the pod in a section of blacktop that keeps having to be re-done and with some visual prompts from the drawn Doctor realizes it takes heat and love to power the machine.  Chloe meanwhile has not only drawn the olympic stadium, causing everyone in there to disappear, but is in the process of drawing the whole Earth.  Rose sees the olympic torch passing by and tosses the tiny ship into the flame.  The alien leaves Chloe's body and everything that was drawn returns to life...unfortunately including the demonic version of her father who was fed off her fears.  With her mother holding her and singing, Chloe is released of her fear and the drawing father never fully materializes.  The torch makes its way to the olympic stadium and the combined heat and love of the crowd sends the ship on its way.

Most adults don't really like this episode but children do.  Apparently that was the point as writer Matthew Graham flat said that he hated adults didn't like this but it was never intended for them.  I did find the drawing powers to be very interesting and inventive.  That being said a lot of the reason I don't particularly like this story is the child.  I'm not sure if this was just something with that child actress or if it was the direction given...but this child is EXTREMELY annoying.  3/4ths of the time she's doing a sort of loud raspy whisper that royally gets on your nerves or she's just being a brat.  I don't care for it but you may.

Episodes 12 and 13
Army of Ghosts / Doomsday

The Doctor returns Rose home for a visit where they discover that humanity has been seeing ghosts for several months at particular times during the day.  After conducting some experiments, the Doctor discovers they are not ghosts but things trying to get into this universe.  He, Jackie, and Rose track the source of the ghosts to the Torchwood Institute where The Doctor and Jackie are taken to see the leader of Torchwood, Yvonne Hartman, while Rose hides in the TARDIS.  Yvonne explains to the Doctor that several months back a strange sphere came through a breach in the wall and has been unable to be detected or sensed by any machine.  The Ghosts are the result of Torchwood trying to use the breach as an energy source.  The Doctor and Rose are taken to the sphere while unknown to anyone, three people of staff have been modified with earbuds.  The Doctor sees the ship and realizes that it is a Void Ship intended to travel the void between dimensions.  However at that time the three staff start an unscheduled ghost appearance and leave the gate open.  Yvonne, the Doctor and Jackie rush to the top as Rose exits the TARDIS and finds her way to the sphere room where she discovers Mickey Smith!  With the gate open, the ghosts fully materialize as Cybermen coming from the alternate universe, the void ship opens up to reveal four Daleks known as The Cult of Skaro.

The Cybermen attempt an alliance with the Daleks but when they are refused the Cybermen declare war on the Daleks.  The Daleks produce something called a Genesis Ark which is stolen Time Lord technology that only a time traveler can open.  With fighting going all around, the Doctor is saved from the Cyber Controller by one of the preachers and taken back to alternate Earth where alternate Pete Tyler explains that his Jackie had died from the Cybermen and asks the Doctor to seal the breach before both Earths fall.  The Doctor, Pete, and the preachers return to Earth as Mickey accidentally opens the Genesis Ark releasing thousands of trapped Daleks from the Time War.  The Doctor knows how to close the breach but doing so will suck everyone who has traveled dimensions into the Void.  He sends Rose, Jackie, and everyone from the other dimension back to that dimension, but Rose decides she would rather be with the Doctor and returns.  The pair activate the breach to close it causing the Cybermen and Daleks to be sucked into the void.  The Cult of Skaro perform an emergency temporal shift and escape disaster as Rose loses grip and heads straight for the Void.  Just as she is about to disappear, Pete teleports back, grabs her, and retreats to his dimension.  The breach closes and the Doctor and Rose are separated.  A few weeks later Rose hears the Doctors voice and her family travels to Bad Wolf Bay where a hologram of the Doctor is standing at the last tiny spot of the breach.  Rose confesses her love for the Doctor and before he can truly respond the breach closes.  The Doctor gains his composure and inputs TARDIS coordinates when he sees a woman in a wedding dress has appeared in the TARDIS and demands to know who he is and where she is.

This is a great way to end a season.  There is a legitimate threat that gets doubled with random Daleks and goes into all-out mayhem.  Doomsday also has one of the single greatest moments in Doctor Who history with the Daleks and Cybermen insulting each other briefly; quite possibly the funniest thing I've seen in the show.  Rose's departure was a depressing one.  While some people believe that the more subtle exit of Jo Grant from the Classic Series was a better companion exit, this was still good and powerful... it's too bad that it kinda gets screwed up in a couple seasons time but... we'll get to that later.  This is a good ending to a pretty good season.

Conclusion

Before I get into my rushed proper conclusion to the season, let's talk a little bit about Mickey Smith.  While Mickey is technically still considered a companion with him traveling in the TARDIS, helping the Doctor, and being a traveling companion for more than one episode, he could have been so much more.  Actually I'm not sure what it is with the modern show and black male main characters.  Both of them, Mickey Smith here and Danny Pink in Series 8, get the shaft in a big way.  Mickey wasn't exactly the brightest character but he had heart and it was in the right area.  I would have loved to see more of him interacting with the universe rather than just one episode them him leaving in the next two-parter.  Yes he did eventually become a Cyberman fighting machine of awesomeness but I'd have just loved to see more of him.  At least he fared better than Danny Pink but I'll get to that much much later.

Series two took several steps in the right direction as the quality of the scripts and concepts certainly improved.  Even the addition of the single worst abomination in Doctor Who history being nestled in this season, that doesn't take away from the great ideas and stories held within this season.  This was a season to truly show what Doctor Who was about for the modern run and still holds strong now.  Please join me again as we continue to examine all of Doctor Who.

This is Ghost, fading into the darkness

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