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Tag: Martha

The Most Important Woman in the Universe

Review of Turn Left / The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End

With this set of three episodes, we have reached the end of our Series Four journey (see what I did there?). While, if I’m being honest, I didn’t remember as many details from them as I thought I might, they are definitely, as a collective whole, the episodes that made the most lasting impression on me from this series.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

In particular, Turn Left, the nominal single episode that leads directly into two-part series finale, stands out to me as one of the best episodes of the entire RTD1 era. Although it still has some flaws, like some regrettable Asian stereotyping (and at least one Chinese character that I’m pretty sure was only half a character, but I had to stop myself from further research to confirm my suspicion after the first fifteen minutes), it is overall a brilliant piece of television.

The whole premise is another take on the butterfly effect, this time focusing on how extremely important Donna is to the universe—or, in fact, the multiverse—as a whole. By changing one tiny decision, Donna alters the fate of all reality.

Before I talk about that cascade of events, I want to mention that one of the things I’d forgotten was how much the fortuneteller got Donna to spill. Without Donna verbally guiding her to the specific inflection point that could prevent her from ever meeting the Doctor, the fortuneteller never could have implemented her plan. (And here we find another flaw: what was the fortuneteller’s motivation? Was she hired by someone? Who?)

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Mixed Memories

Review of The Doctor’s Daughter / The Unicorn and the Wasp

There are only two episodes in this month’s segment of my Series Four re-watch, and they make for an interesting contrast. While my pre-viewing memories of one were fairly clear and complete, the other episode was much muddier in my mind than I’d realized.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

If you had asked me a few months ago, before I started thinking about Series Four again for this review series, I would have told you that The Doctor’s Daughter included the Tenth Doctor, Jenny—someone grown nearly instantly from a genetic sample from the Doctor—and Martha. I don’t think I would even have remembered that Donna is in the episode.

I can’t pinpoint exactly why Donna’s role had so thoroughly slipped my mind. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, really, because her contribution is huge. But somehow my mind fixated on Martha’s relationship with the Hath soldier instead. [Spoiler alert] The death of Peg obviously struck me hard on first viewing, because along with all the images of Jenny tumbling through a laser field and of human and Hath soldiers fighting each other for “generations,” that is probably the single biggest detail that sticks in my mind from The Doctor’s Daughter.

It’s unfortunate that a quick moment of pathos overshadowed everything else, because Donna is—as usual—f’ing brilliant here. Her big human heart helps thaw the Doctor’s, showing him some of his own prejudices and getting him to open up a little bit about the pain of his various losses. Thanks to Donna, he eventually comes to accept Jenny, just in time to lose her.

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Friends and Families

Review of Planet of the Ood / The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky

As I continue my re-watch of Series Four, I’ve reached our first two-parter. First, though, we revisit what at the time was still a quite new alien species, seen only once before (in Series Two) and glossed over as a “slave race” (so much side-eye): the Ood. At least it only took the production team two years to think better of that characterization and revisit the background of the species.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

Somehow, despite my overall poor recollections of Series Four, I seem to have retained Planet of the Ood pretty well; my pre-viewing notes seem to hit all the major points. Among the farthest-reaching of those details was “the Doctor Donna,” which, as we’ll see, comes back at the end of the series.

Although there are certainly parts of this episode that are difficult to watch, not only from a creepiness (or poorly-aged CGI) point of view, but from a humanitarian one, the fact that our heroes start off from the very beginning siding with the clearly mistreated Ood makes it bearable. And as someone who holds a lot of societal privilege myself, I have always really identified with Donna as she listens to the Ood song. It’s haunting and horrifying and she wants to do right by the Ood by listening, but she doesn’t have the fortitude to continue.

Donna (like me, like many of us) has the option to step away from the pain instead of to live it every moment like the Ood do. She can stop listening to the song, but to her credit, she doesn’t ignore what the Ood are going through. Maybe she’s not doing everything right, or taking every step she possibly can, but as she and the Doctor uncover new atrocities, she makes a concerted effort to help.

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Confession #90: I’ve Underrated Martha

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Martha Jones came on the scene at an awkward time—awkward for me, that is. The way I was introduced to the show, I had zero time to process the loss of my first Companion before another was thrust upon me, and I was not ready to move on. Sort of like the Doctor, then, I didn’t really give her a fair shake. She didn’t get the affection and respect from me that the character really deserved.

As I look back on her time in the TARDIS, though, I realize that I really have given Martha short shrift. Just by being there, by taking up space on screen and refusing to be shoved aside, she did more for representation of diversity than anyone else in the show’s history.

It’s not just her existence as a black Companion that makes her significant (and a better character than I’ve been able to internalize before); she has some brilliant moments that turn the old, comfortable “standard operating procedure” on its ear.

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