The Doctor's Daughter

Intriguing episode titles have been used to keep audiences watching Doctor Who since The Cave of Skulls, but some are just downright provocative. There's nothing new about that either (see 1965's The Death of Doctor Who), but it feels like we've had more of them over the last few years. There's a connecting pattern as well: The Next Doctor, The Doctor's Wife, The Wedding of River Song, The Name of the Doctor - sure they might raise the eyebrow of the casual viewer, or grab the attention of a newspaper previewer, but theres a certain amount of fan-baiting about them too isn't there? Titles such as these hint that sacred cows are about to be slaughtered by a production team tinkering with the show's core tenets.

To be fair, I think the desire to be provocative is a healthy one and that the key objective is to prick journalists into action and to generate publicity. If I were in charge, I'm not sure I wouldn't want to tease the hardcore fans every once in a while either, but it must be noted that none of these stories ever actually do the terrible thing the title threatens to do, or reveal the terrible thing that must never be revealed. It should also be noted that it is fans of a certain age that tend to have conniptions about things like this - my boys, of course, have no preconceptions, and no notions that certain 'fact's about the Doctor are 'fixed', as if particular lines of dialogue could be given Grade I listed status; they are as likely to blithely accept The Doctor's Granny, as we were the Doctor's granddaughter.

When I discovered that an upcoming episode was called The Doctor's Daughter (I spoiled myself, idiot, clicking on a link when I should have waited for DWM to tell me), I thought to myself "Oh, they're going to do that are they?" and I was mildly disconcerted for a moment or too. But I was much more uncomfortable about having found the title out prematurely than I was about what it was. And then, when the time came, the 'mystery' of the Doctor's daughter was cleared up before the opening credits - no tortuous back story, no unnecessary revelations about the Doctor's original family, no how-did-you-escape-the-Time-War speeches - and I was able to simply enjoy the story.

It is mostly very satisfying. For one thing it is very neatly constructed, managing to make room not only for both Donna and Martha, but Jenny too.

Jenny and her relationship with the Doctor are at the centre of the episode, and their story plays out very nicely. Georgia Moffett is very good, and suggests that Jenny is learning and developing without ever making her appear childlike, sceptical and determined without ever becoming truculent or sulky. The Doctor makes a convincing parent, consumed by the normal nightmares: the agony of losing a child; the pain of seeing his own failings echoed in her behaviour. With much economy, but without ever being unconvincing, the episode uses the time it has to chart how these two gradually warm to each other. The beautiful sting in the tale is that, although Jenny's death always appears inevitable, her resurrection does not; her regenerative glow relieves the gloom that would otherwise make this episode really quite dark.

Donna, ever the human half of the Chiswick/Gallifrey hybrid, chivvies the Doctor along, a sort of emotionally literate Jiminy Cricket to the Time Lord Pinocchio. She teases and cajoles him, insists on naming Jenny and treating her like a person - but she does this all so gently, never pushing too fair, slowly enabling the Doctor to let himself feel the emotions he is desperately trying to hold in check. As with The Fires of Pompeii and Planet of the Ood, she is once more behaving as a missing but complementary part of his personality - the arc for this series is secretly playing out right in front of our eyes, hidden in plain sight. And whilst the Doctor is distracted by family problems, Donna gets to apply her office skills to the wider universe and unlocks the mystery of Messaline. I love that the mundane business of understanding timestamps, filing and archiving is a transferrable skill - it makes Donna so much more accessible to us than Zoe with her photographic memory, or Leela with her janus thorns.

Martha, meanwhile, carries half the episode all by herself: the only speaking character in the Hath side of Messaline. Surrounded by prosthetics and talking to herself, this could have been ended up rather strained, but Ageyman's performance is never unconvincing or unnatural and Martha's qualities (so competent, so likeable) mean that she wins over her captors, teams up with Peck, and navigates the perils of this alien world with some flair, if not ease. Even better, and unlike some previous companions (Mel the computer programmer? Peri the botanist?), she repeatedly utilises her medical training: fixing Peck's shoulder and rushing to Jenny's aide. Like Rose, like Donna, Martha feels like a real person, thanks to great writing and acting. Out of the three, though, Doctor Jones has easily the best music, and Murray Gold's theme for her is never better than at the end of the episode, where it rises in a potent bluesy farewell.

Martha is the first companion to get her second chance at leaving the new series, and both goodbyes are really good. They certainly both feel justified, or, rather, they feel to me like they are two halves of one protracted goodbye: the first is abrupt and somewhat incomplete; this, the second, leaves everything neatly wrapped up. It is very satisfying and, importantly, the series feels like it has regained the emotional reality that went out of the window during Last of the Time Lords.

You'd think there wouldn't be room in the episode for anything else, but there's still quite a lot! There's something really alien and mysterious about Messaline, thanks to some ingenious choices of location, some good design work, and some clever concepts. The whole scenario - the colonisation, the underground city, the generations of soldiers fighting a war over seven days - is exotic and intriguing in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. For all that, I'm not convinced it entirely makes sense - it's never explained, for example, why Cobb is so much older than everybody else (is he part of the original crew, manipulating the younger generations for his own ends?), and surely not everyone from the earliest generations has been killed within a week? Is there no one left who actually remembers the landing? I'm not enamoured of the Doctor's preachy shouting at the end either ( "a man who never would, except for when I blew up Skaro or gunned down all those Cybermen in the TARDIS") but he has just lost his daughter and I'm never actually going to complain when someone on television tells my children that guns are evil.

Despite the somewhat upbeat ending, William was wistful enough to comment for once: "I wish she had gone with the Doctor..." Chris could only give this an eight because Jenny "should have regenerated completely not just come back to life. Also I don't believe the Hand could bring the TARDIS there. It's a hand, it hasn't got magic powers."

Oh, just you wait.


NEXT TIME...