http://www.aldenbates.com/archives/2009/11/26/doctor_who_waters_of_mars_in_a_nutshell.html

@ Tim – Yeah, I did think it was a little cheeky, given that they probably didn’t actually need a physical thing to be locked in the ice, to have something not to show was a lead up the garden path.

And those poor poor birds…

You could probably write it off with some comment about Tardis biofilters but really you shouldn’t have to. Sloppy.

I would agree with the rush aspect there Dave – it’s Utopia all over again, though that was helped by the impact of Human Nature beforehand – a story which has been referenced in a few WoM reviews so far, in fact.

Perhaps Planet of the Dead should have had more foreshadowing than the bus psychic? Would it have helped if the flies were Ood? I dunno. Looking at the specials for this year I do wonder if the earlier story is more of a missed opportunity and jars with its tone. And in saying that, the first part of the CiN trailer for End of Time doesn’t fill me with hope either. But perhaps that’s for another blog post?

I didn’t mind the run around and the zombies siegeing the Mall… er, Mars station. I suspect the younger target audience wouldn’t know a zombie apocalypse if it shambled mindlessly over them. It was all very pretty, looked nice to start with, and was bags of style over substance. It was the Time Lord Victorious bits that let me down, as soon as the Doctor left the base it became a box ticking exercise of picking the crewmen off one by one.

I have no problem with the concept, hey in many ways it’s simply the angsty Time’s Champion shtick writ large on screen. I just thought it was so badly done. I’ve always maintained that RTDs scripts all revolve around the last five minutes and a lot of the stuff before that can be regarded as window dressing to the main event (as Peter notes here – it feels there are two parts), but the Doctor’s change doesn’t feel like a decent into madness, but more the flicking of a switch. They just didn’t sell it to me. If you look at it there has been lots of opportunity to build up to this point, little hints (you could argue much of the moral argument is just a retread of Fires of Pompeii).

The concept of the Doctor going bad would’ve been a great one to give a slow burn build, but instead he seems to flip unbelievably fast (compare it with his darker moments in Runaway Bride, there we’ve been sold his feelings of loss and sadness with Rose over the entire episode, you can buy into his darker side). And thinking about it, this great idea, this wonderful dramatic opportunity, was flicked through solely as a dramatic device for setting up a broken and dejected Doctor, desperate and doomed by fate to die in time for Christmas. Rather than being a good thing in itself it’s become shorthand to set up the sequel (and when you think about it – Doctor gone bad would be a much more gripping season closer than some of the ones we’ve had).

And the other galling thing was that it was so rushed it got rather lazy and transparently emotionally manipulative. Doctor goes manic, queue swelling loud music (Muurrraaayyyy Goooolllddddd), people dying over comms, insert space for audience to cry.

Even Adelaide’s death to me sfelt forced, as Jamas notes on his blog – it seems completely out of character to that point. And we know from other adventures it would be theoretically easy bypass history – they could be saved and live new lives elsewhere (history still recording they were dead). The logic, the dramatic and character development building could’ve all been done so much be and created a far better story. You could argue there is little wrong with it, but there could’ve been so much more right.

No, there’s not. The ‘clever bit’ (i.e. clever aspect) is that it has an in-built spanner. I then went on to say:

“His eventual decision to meddle, informed perhaps by the sounds of the dying pioneers in his head mic but more strongly by his resolve to act as The Last of the Time Lords, is Russell T Davies’ spanner, and it’s a good one.”

‘I should leave’ could have been a scene from Pompeii, really. Not THAT new, but essential to the Doctor’s road to Hell bit hence, I’d say, the inclusion.

As for skipping the first half I say again: it’s well shot, well made, but it’s an extended set-up with a pay-off that doesn’t rely on the setting, the monsters or even the characters. The Doctor’s ‘turn’ is the crux, and I think that at that point almost anything could have led to it, certainly not specifically the events at Bowie Base One.

You suggest that that the first half could be skipped, but then praise the story for the ‘clever bit’ when the Doctor recognises where and when he is and says he has to go. That moment occurs within the first ten minutes, so well within the apparently dispensable first half.