Doctor Who SE30E06: The Doctor's Daughter [Spoilers]

[Rye]

I liked what I saw, but I kept nodding off due to being worn out and woke up in some Graham Norton show. What happened after Martha got to the surface, as that's about where I conked out?

[Bounty]

I liked what I saw, but I kept nodding off due to being worn out and woke up in some Graham Norton show. What happened after Martha got to the surface, as that's about where I conked out?

Martha, Donna, Doc and Jenny meet up in the sacred temple thing and discover that it's the colony ship that brought everyone there. The logs say that the expedition leader died and a dispute broke out about who should replace him, leading to the war. Donna figures out that the newest section of the tunnels was built recently and that the "war" has been going on for just seven days - which, in clone terms, is "several generations". The fishguys and the humans pile in, Doc starts the terraforming sequence and the human leader takes a shot at him, killing Jenny. Doc nearly shoots the human leader and then tells everyone to get along as the planet transforms into a proper colony.

Martha gets dropped off in London, Doc takes back off with Donna. Cut to Jenny waking up and stealing a shuttle to "go out, save planets, fight monsters and do a lot of running".

[speaker-to-trolls]

Well, that was weak up until the very end of the episode, I will admit that the Seven Day War twist was pretty cool, and I like the design of the Hath. In every other respect it was weak though, not offensively bad, just weak, thin, unfocussed, etc. It's a pity because, as has been noted, the idea held a lot of potential.

On a personal and somewhat whiny note I didn't get the impression from the fight scenes that this was a war that could get through multiple generations in a week.

[General Zod]

Blandly inoffensive episode, but I hope they wind up doing something with Jenny later on and not kill her off as a useless plot device. I'd rather she didn't turn into a character that gets shoved onto the sidelines. Though I have to agree that Martha showing up was largely pointless.

[Crazedwraith]

Since the General was a clone and since they had only been fighting a week. Doesn't that mean the clones were under going accelerated ageing? Surely Jenny only has a few weeks to live anyway?

[General Zod]

Since the General was a clone and since they had only been fighting a week. Doesn't that mean the clones were under going accelerated ageing? Surely Jenny only has a few weeks to live anyway?

I'm not really sure how that works, but now that you mention it it does seem a bit like a plot device they forgot to address.

[Stark]

Who knew it'd be that easy to restore the Time Lords? lolololololol

[Bedlam]

Since the General was a clone and since they had only been fighting a week. Doesn't that mean the clones were under going accelerated ageing? Surely Jenny only has a few weeks to live anyway?

I assumed that the clones come out at different ages, some are born age 20 and others age 50?

The general was noticably older than anyone else so there might be accelorated ageing in there.

[The Guid]

Yeah what was with the general being much older? I assumed it was going to be a plot point and he knew what was really going on but never let on. Why were the maps suppressed?

To be fair to the seeming lack of casualties we did see a tunnel getting blown up by the humans - perhaps that was a last gasp thing and there had been constant fighting down lots of tunnels for a while.

[TC Pilot]

I have to admit, as tolerant as I am of these episodes, this was pretty bad. First off, it was almost as if they crammed two episodes into one and blazed through it as fast as they possibly could. The fact that Jenny went from coming back to life to stealing the space ship in all of two seconds is the most blatant example of that. From the very start, with the Hath charging down the tunnel, the fighting just looked ridiculous, and the weird machine guns and half-trot the humans kept using only made it worse.

The fact that the Doctor just left his daughter's body behind and inexplicably failed to wait for her regeneration (why is Martha telling him that anyway?) made things even worse, and the big 7-day revelation was equally stupid (an "outbreak of pacifism" before they lost contact 3 generations ago? So like two hours ago?).

Pretty much the only things good about the episode were the Hath and the New-Byzantine calendar.

[mr friendly guy]

I thought it was Stephen Moffet. That's her last name.

Peter Davison was born as Peter Moffett. Davison is just his stage name.

[Tychu]

I have a feeling this episode (haven't seen it yet, we're still on the first episode of the Sontarans here in the States and the Jenny episode hasn't been put online yet) playes well into the whole Rose thing this season. Especially when in the second Sontaran episode the doctor restates his Empty Child line "Are you my Mummy". Which by itself is just a joke intended for us whovians but if you put it in the context of the show as a whole it is a hint for whats to come. For only an episode later Rose and Eccelston's doctor has a conversation about the Doctor being a father. Put that in with Rose apearing every so often, you got a finale that probably will feature Rose, Donna, Martha, and Jenny. Maby Adric will get thrown in there as well

[Darth Mall]

It wasn't the best ever, but I still liked the episode quite a bit.


Did anyone else notice how the doctor was going on about how she was to much like him? Maybe it was a hint at him having no regenerations left? Once he's gone she can assume the mantle as the "doctor"?

[NecronLord]

Since the General was a clone and since they had only been fighting a week. Doesn't that mean the clones were under going accelerated ageing? Surely Jenny only has a few weeks to live anyway?

Yeah, the writers only seemed to twig on that problem in the commentry. Their idea is that when the machine is low on power, it spits out a direct copy of the individual being cloned - thus, this'd be the fifteenth or so general Cobb.

[NecronLord]

Who knew it'd be that easy to restore the Time Lords? lolololololol

Because of course, she has the knowledge, mental training, and culture of a Time Lor- wait. No.

[NecronLord]

Maby Adric will get thrown in there as well

What? Adric? When we last saw him, he was smacking into a dinosaur-populated earth at incredible speeds.

[Zac Naloen]

Who knew it'd be that easy to restore the Time Lords? lolololololol

Because of course, she has the knowledge, mental training, and culture of a Time Lor- wait. No.

and how are they to make more Time Lords?...

Ew..

[El Moose Monstero]

Who knew it'd be that easy to restore the Time Lords? lolololololol

Because of course, she has the knowledge, mental training, and culture of a Time Lor- wait. No.

and how are they to make more Time Lords?...

Ew..

Probably just using the progeny machines again - if it can whistle up a daughter rather than just a clone, then it can generate a whole new batch of people. Although they'll all be inbred to hell if they do anything more than that.

And not to sound cynical, but the Lazarus Experiment was 3x06 and that was a plot point for the finale of last season, and Doctor Who is getting just a wee bit formulaic in its series structure at the moment. I'd be surprised if some part of this episode doesn't get pulled into the finale.

[DaveJB]

According to the commentary, they were just going to kill off Jenny at the end of the episode and be done with it... it was actually Steven Moffat that pointed out how utterly stupid and pointless it was, and persuaded RTD and Greenhorn to let her live.

As for Jenny's resurrection... for some reason it reminded me of the bit when the Doctor grew a new hand in The Christmas Invasion. Maybe because she was less than 36 hours old, she had enough left-over "Time Lord energy" to repair the damage caused by the gunshot without totally regenerating...

Oh, who the hell am I kidding? They just didn't think it through at all.

[Bounty]

The poll results look weird. I'm not sure I ever saw that curve for an episode rating.

[Tychu]

Maby Adric will get thrown in there as well

What? Adric? When we last saw him, he was smacking into a dinosaur-populated earth at incredible speeds.

It was a joke my dear friend necron, you brits really don't have a sense of humor. All kidding aside though, there was a kid in my Atlantic Revolutions class this semester who looks like Adric. But my point though was that the finale is probably going to have something to do with Rose and possibly anything else that comes with the whole "Bad Wolf" thing.

[Prozac the Robert]

<de-lurk>

I thought it was obvious that she was saved by the teraforming gas. The stuff she breathes out is glowy-smoky in exactly the same was as the stuff in the previous scene.

The regeneration effects from him turning into the current doctor were completely different.

Incidentally I enjoyed the episode. The setting was a nice bit of sci-fi, which makes a nice change from ood brains and lava monsters. I mostly liked the Jenny plot as well, and really think they could have kept her around for a bit. The death was annoyingly predictable, and the doctors reaction too it a bit flat. But it was still a pretty good episode.

[Lord Woodlouse]

<de-lurk>

I thought it was obvious that she was saved by the teraforming gas. The stuff she breathes out is glowy-smoky in exactly the same was as the stuff in the previous scene.

The regeneration effects from him turning into the current doctor were completely different.

Incidentally I enjoyed the episode. The setting was a nice bit of sci-fi, which makes a nice change from ood brains and lava monsters. I mostly liked the Jenny plot as well, and really think they could have kept her around for a bit. The death was annoyingly predictable, and the doctors reaction too it a bit flat. But it was still a pretty good episode.

Actually the effect was exactly the same as the stuff the Doctor was breathing out in the Christmas Invasion. As has been mentioned it seems far more likely that she simply managed to repair her body, being in what we can only presume is the same "cellular regeneration cycle" that Time Lords have shortly after getting their new bodies.

[StarKillaz]

Although formulaic I actually enjoyed this episode (to some extent), apart from the obvious and predictable ending with Jenny regenerating only after the Doctor had left.

Would it have been so difficult to have had Jenny regenerate straight away and then either; state she wants to stay and help the colony grow etc or go with the Doctor and have (as has already been stated) him slowly training her in what it is to be a Timelord.

But no we have to have it so the Doctor believes she is dead so that they can continue with an angst / emo Doctor who believes that everyone close to him dies. If they don’t bring Jenny back for the finale in some respect and they just leave this issue I am going to be disappointed.

[Stark]

Because of course, she has the knowledge, mental training, and culture of a Time Lor- wait. No.

Your constant attempts to put a brave face on the decline of a show never cease to amuse. Play on, maestro! I mean, all that information is totally lost and isn't either mentally transferable or stored in a time machine... nah, that'd make the writers idiots!