Sunday, June 29, 2008
Stolen planets
The penultimate episode of Dr Who season 4 was I have to say really a rather good one, with just about the whole cast of companions coming back into the fore, The structure of the episode was actually a bit busy but thankfully things keeping flowing along nicely as the story jumps between the different characters. So it was great to see the return of Captain Jack (and his 2 remaining Torchwood crewmembers) Sarah Jane, Martha, and of course Rose (again). With all the planets in the local constellation being pulled together the Doctor and Donna are trapped in the TARDIS in desperate need to get back to Earth and with no real way to contact any of his companions, not to mention a whole army of Daleks on their way to harvest Earth, and to top it off with the return of their evil creator, Davros, just how could things get any worse?
I felt this episode was definitely one of the strongest ones of the season so far, my only problem with it is I found it hard to follow some of the exposition that was going on as David Tennant was rattling it off about 100 miles an hour, its definitely one you'd need to play back on your iPlayer to get the gist of. Its really good to see all the companions back again and the surprise return of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones "former Prime Minister" (still flashing her credentials!). Another slight niggle though is that this episode assumed that people were fans of all the spin-off shows in order to get some of the references, as otherwise I struggled to identify who was that boy with Sarah Jane (until she said who he was) and what's that home defence tech system she has? Also having not watched Torchwood in a while (since the beginning really!) I didn't get who that guy was with Captain Jack either. OK and another slight niggle seeing the return of Davros was good, and Julian Bleach did a fair job as him but it didn't quite scale the heights of Michael Wisher's fantastic original performance, but it would be a tough act to follow. My niggle with Davros though is if he used his body to regrow his Dalek force wouldn't have no body left at all? There is quite a lot of them!
Anywayyy one of the highlights of the episode of course was seeing The Doctor running towards Rose to reunite with her, only to have their wonderful moment ruined by a Dalek, which brings up what will happen next week in the finale? And who is going to die next week? We'll find out.
I felt this episode was definitely one of the strongest ones of the season so far, my only problem with it is I found it hard to follow some of the exposition that was going on as David Tennant was rattling it off about 100 miles an hour, its definitely one you'd need to play back on your iPlayer to get the gist of. Its really good to see all the companions back again and the surprise return of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones "former Prime Minister" (still flashing her credentials!). Another slight niggle though is that this episode assumed that people were fans of all the spin-off shows in order to get some of the references, as otherwise I struggled to identify who was that boy with Sarah Jane (until she said who he was) and what's that home defence tech system she has? Also having not watched Torchwood in a while (since the beginning really!) I didn't get who that guy was with Captain Jack either. OK and another slight niggle seeing the return of Davros was good, and Julian Bleach did a fair job as him but it didn't quite scale the heights of Michael Wisher's fantastic original performance, but it would be a tough act to follow. My niggle with Davros though is if he used his body to regrow his Dalek force wouldn't have no body left at all? There is quite a lot of them!
Anywayyy one of the highlights of the episode of course was seeing The Doctor running towards Rose to reunite with her, only to have their wonderful moment ruined by a Dalek, which brings up what will happen next week in the finale? And who is going to die next week? We'll find out.
# posted by kenny @ 3:55 pm 
