"I'm the Doctor"
"Doctor Who?"
Jesus. What a weird episode.
This episode confused me. And I can't really think up a review, which means I'll make one of my lists. Ready?
Reproduction is the Watchword:
-On Messaline, two species are reproducing through a machine in order to increase their numbers and win a meaningless war. Humans and Haths alike.
-The Adipose were created, through partenogenesis, from human fat.
-The Pyrovites wanted to reproduce through human host bodies
-The Sontarans wanted to clone themselves.
Planet Engineering
-The Pyrovites wanted to take over Earth, modify its atmosphere and general biospherical settings, in order to regenerate
-The Sontarans...sorry, guys, the Pyrovites thought up a similar strategy centuries ago. Points for successfully converting the atmosphere and almost succeeding.
- Messaline is successfully converted into a habitable biosphere.
It's the Year 2008. Do You Know Where Your Planets Are?
-Adipose's hatchery planet is missing.
-The Pyrovites' planet is gone
-The Oods' planet has been taken over by humans
-The Sontarans want to reproduce on Earth. Why?
-Messaline is being converted. Why? What happened to the original planets?
"I said war! Huh! Good God, y'all, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"
-The Doctor's attitude towards guns expands to violence in general. He is quite sick of it.
-Both the Ninth and Tenth Doctor angst about the Time War. In two completely different ways and with different end results.
-She is a soldier, but so is he. They both have weapons.
-They might use different weapons at this stage, but the doctor is no stranger to violence and everybody knows it.
-Guns. Weapons. Doctor has caused death. Martha has caused death. Donna with the Doctor has caused death.
Contradictions
-The doctor is a soldier but doesn't want to admit it.
-He hates violence but will use it as a last resort.
-Hates loneliness but when confronted with another possible timelord, he is scared as hell.
-He hates guns, but he is quite glad when his friends use them.
-He and Donna aren't together, but he can barely function without her.
-He doesn't want Jenny, but he doesn't want to leave her there.
-He is so hurt as to go as far as almost using a gun, yet he doesn't.
Parallels:
-Martha and Donna have swapped places. Whence Martha wanted to stick with the Doctor and Donna didn't, now Donna can't foresee her life without the Doctor and the TARDIS, and Martha just wants domestic bliss with her pediatrician and UNIT.
-Jack and Jenny: soldiers, slow forming relationship with the doctor that starts out with dislike and then grudging like etc etc. They both die and come back to life.
-The scar on the back of the Doctor's hand looks suspiciously like the scar in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.
-Jenny and Master: killed by guns. "Die" in Doctor's arms. Doctor cries, is emo. In this case, he rages.
-The loss of your foundations is hard. The old soldier "kills" Jenny because, with no war, he truly has nothing else to live for.
-Split point of view gives us Martha insight. She befriends the Hath, goes through another cycle of Doctor style adventure and realizes that she really is ready to call it quits. This goodbye is final and needed.
-Rose said "forever" and was trapped in a parallel world. If something happens to Donna, I'm going to stop watching.
In Loco Parentis.
-Donna and Doctor are just like a couple of parents. There is naming. "She belongs with us".
- The Doctor putting up walls against further pain and loss and heartache and hope. He ends up hurting Jenny in the process because she is just a child, even though she looks like a teenager, and can't understand his rejection, wants love and he is reluctant. This is father/daughter dynamics at its best.
-Donna pleads with him to adopt her, take her along. The Doctor finally agrees.
-The Doctor instructs and influences Jenny through his words and his actions. Donna does too. "All this thinking."
-The Doctor worries about physical and psychological repercussions
-There is a familial relationship being born out of danger and closeness and reciprocal need.
-The Doctor feels guilty at leaving her behind.
"Underneath the underneath."
-Double perception, team TARDIS splits up.
-There are no good guys and bad guys, but a senseless war.
-The war hasn't lasted for years, but for days.
-The Adipose weightloss plan masks a partenogenetic breeding program
-The soothsayers aren't really gifted, but channeling the Pyrovites' information.
-The eruption of Mt. Vesuvio isn't a natural phenomenom, but caused by the Doctor in order to stop an alien invasion
-The Atmos isn't just a filter, but is the key element in the "let's take over the world" Sontaran plan.
-Doctor and Donna aren't married, but are totally shagging in the TARDIS
-Clone!Martha isn't Martha, but she poses as Martha.
"I don't do domestics."
-Doctor and Donna have it out like a married couple throughout the episode.
-Donna names the Doctor's daughter and acts like a concerned parent throughout
-The Doctor stops Donna from using her womanly wiles. Protective, possessive and jealous. I rest my case.
"Oh crystal ball, crystal ball, tell me what I'm looking for."
-Gallifrey is awfully present. Maybe it's coming back?
-Jenny will be back, because she hasn't died. The resuscitation? Regeneration. Biospherical engineering gas. Sheer dumb luck. You name it.
AWOL
-Shadow Proclamation
-Medusa Cascade
-Rose
-Bees