The Sontaran two-parter from this Doctor Who series really pleased me. Lots of fun things happened, the production design of the alien battlesuits and technology looked great, and we got a somewhat more mature Martha Jones back for a couple of episodes. There were a few rough pacing moments – as if the script worked out about 10 minutes short overall – but nothing fatal.<\/p>\n
Donna remains an excellent foil for the Doctor, freaking out in fear one moment and standing up to him the next. It’s a lot of fun having grownups aboard the TARDIS, and even when Donna must leave, I hope they consider continuing the trend. At no point did the episode get stupid (well, there’s an atmosphere bit near the end which is a little brow-raising, but not too bad), and UNIT gets to show that, in the 21st century, they’re actually good for something.<\/p>\n
I’d put in a request, if I could, for the Beeb to fund some more space episodes, as Earth is getting invaded now every month on the first Wednesday. It’s like paying bills – “Let’s see, cable, electric, water, and oh yes, alien invasion due tomorrow. Must call in sick to work.”<\/p>\n
Everyone caught the face that shows for a split second on the TARDIS console screen, right?<\/p>\n
I wish we’d had more Martha, in fact, since we had a lot of Fake Martha through the two-parter. On the other hand, I liked the bit where she convinces herself to reveal the Sontarans’ plan. And speaking of character bits, “I have to give them a choice” is classic Doctor, and the boy genius’ sacrifice is completely in character when you realize it’s not for the sake of the human race, but mainly to show the Sontarans that yes, he is indeed smarter than them.<\/p>\n
Nice shout-out to the Brigadier – excuse me, Sir<\/i> Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. I’m still not buying that the UN asked Russell Davies to change the UNIT acronym. Dude, just ‘fess up and admit that you wanted to change it, okay?<\/p>\n
And next week’s episode… oh, yes, next week. Fan canon has claimed for years that Time Lords don’t breed so much as produce new genetically re-woven members of their society from some kind of space-time vats. This despite the fact that the First Doctor’s original companion was his granddaughter (“oh, the old coot just liked calling her that”), and other references made by the Second, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth incarnations. I’m hoping that this upcoming episode pisses off a lot of people! *grin*<\/p>\n
So yes, I’m a happy Whovian today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Sontaran two-parter from this Doctor Who series really pleased me. Lots of fun things happened, the production design of the alien battlesuits and technology looked great, and we got a somewhat more mature Martha Jones back for a couple of episodes. There were a few rough pacing moments – as if the script worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[67,36],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-doctor-who","tag-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1xCb9-dp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}