(744) The Doctor's Daughter

So todays episode is one which features David Tennant and his future wife and daughter of the fifth incarnation of the Doctor and his father in law Georgia Moffett. This follows on from the previous episode but isn’t part of a three parter. This is the second story from Stephen Greenhorn who wrote the rather interesting Lazarus Experiment from the previous series so there was always the possibility that he might get away with it again. Sadly within a few minutes it seems this isn’t going to be the case.

Within three minutes Martha is taken by the Hath. Martha is poorly served in this episode as she is stuck with the Hath and cries when one drowns in some quicksand. It seems like Martha was bought along in this episode for someone to interact with the Hath. The problem with this is that it’s just so in your face about it. Her final scene isn’t quite as emotional as it was at the end of Last of the Timelords.

The monster of the week are the Hath. The Hath don’t speak, they don’t even have any translation device which makes their involvement somewhat difficult. I can’t figure whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand its quite different to not have an alien race speaking English yet on the other hand it slows the interaction between Martha and the Hath down.

I think that General Cobb was a good villain but one of the problems with the story is he doesn’t get the chance to be as good a villain as he could be. I think that Nigel Terry manages to do a good enough job to at least seem like the most interesting character. It would be wrong of me to not mention Mrs David Tennant. In 2008 they weren’t a couple and so its only now that it weird to watch them and think that on screen they might be father and daughter but in real life they are husband and wife. Taking that out of the situation I thought that Moffett did a good job. Apparently, it was Steven Moffat’s idea to bring Jenny back to life. I think that in hindsight this was a mistake cause she hasn’t been mentioned once since this episode and so as good as it looked to have her on her own adventures, in terms of Doctor Who narrative its not a clever idea.

It’s a slightly disappointing episode because it seems like to many things have been crammed into 45 minutes. I also think that it was a mistake to bring Martha along in this episode because it devalues her previous exit.