Loaded Couch Potatoes

“Water always wins.”  The latest episode of Doctor Whohas finally hit the BBC America this past Saturday.  Here’s the review! *spoilers*

The Waters of Mars is the 3rd episode to air since season 4 concluded.  With only a 2-part episode left for the tenth doctor the tension rises.  In this very dark episode, the doctor finds himself on mars.  The doctor realizes that he has come across Earth’s first colonists of Mars, who are doomed to die that very day.

The doctor is brought to the base by the singular weakness of this episode, a “funny robot”.  The robot says “gadget, gadget” and is supremely annoying.  It’s only function in the plot is to enable the doctor several quick get-aways.  First, while fleeing a couple of infected crewmen, and second, the escape at the climax of the episode.  It would have been really easy to write this robot out, but I’m guessing because of how dark this episode was Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford wanted something to pin a couple light hearted scenes to.

There the doctor meets Captain Adelaide Brooke and her crew of Bowie Base One.  Although nobody in history ever knew what happened on Mars (the captain ordered “Action 5″ which set off a nuclear bomb destroying the base), the doctor and the colonists find themselves up against a versatile bad guy – water.  Not just water really, but the waters of mars ability to infect their bodies with a new martian host.  The look of the person after being infected is pretty scary.  Face make-up, contact lenses, and some water effects make up a pretty unsettling costume.  With a couple of exceptions when the water effects are clearly CGI.

 Once the doctor realizes that he is at a “fixed point in time” and there is nothing he can do, he tries to leave.  But he is detained by the captain, who is suspicious that he could be involved.  The doctor hangs around long enough to see what is happening to her crew.  He tries to communicate with one of them speaking in ancient north martian.  But with Earth at stake, the captain and doctor have to make sure that everyone isn’t already infected. 

The doctor spills way to much information with the captain, as time brings her closer to her death.  The doctor tells her about her lineage following her out into space and creating history.  Thinking that she and her crew will get away, she lets the doctor leave (looking very good in his blue suit).

But she stops him in the air lock on his way out, demanding the truth.  The doctor reveals all to her, and we find out that more than just the time lords code is keeping him from intervening.  After The Fires of Pompeii, the doctor has felt that even if he does try to save them, he may only end up causing death.  Torn by the decision the doctor trudges back to the TARDIS, all the way hearing the screams and terror through the head set in his space suit.  He listens to them struggle to escape and one by one are taken over by the “water”.

While he’s walking, the doctor thinks about how he is the last time lord, and realizes that there is nobody who can stop him from doing what he wants.  The episode gets intense as the doctor goes slightly mad with power in his desperation to save the three remaining people.  He knows that his death is coming soon and that “he will knock 4 times”.

His own impending doom seems to only fuel the need he has to save Captain Adelaide.  But she starts Action 5, knowing that it is what is supposed to happen.  With the help of “gadget, gadget” flying the TARDIS into the base (boo robot), the doctor safely delivers the three to earth.  But Adelaide has resigned herself to her death knowing what her family will be inspired to do because of it. 

She tells the doctor that what he’s done is wrong.  But there is nobody to stop him.  She goes into her house and shoots herself.  The doctor is horrified.  Like I said, very dark episode.

“I’ve gone too far.”  The doctor sees an Ood and he says “my death? is it time?”  But it disappears.  The doctor scrambles back into his TARDIS where the cloister bell is tolling.  Defiantly he says ”No!” and begins to take off in the TARDIS.

Very dark and very ominous, this episode has great intensity.  Now, having the broken the laws of time, the doctor seems to be running scared, for the moment.  It will be very exciting to see what happens next in The End of Time – Part 1.  Thankfully, this episode airs only one(!!!) day after it airs on the BBC.  So catch it, the day after Christmas on BBC America 9/8c.