Based on the title and the preview, I went into “The Doctor’s Daughter” expecting to not be pleased. In fact, you could go so far as to say I hated the entire concept and idea before the first moment of the show flashed up on my screen.
So, I have to admit that coming away from the story I didn’t necessarily hate the episode.
But I didn’t love it either.
It was just kind of, well, there. It had some great work by David Tennant and Georgia Moffett. You could just see the two of them having a great time, getting to “act” for pages on end of script.
It’s just a shame those pages on end of script didn’t actually have something more, well, substantial.
And now, before I ruin everything for those of you who haven’t seen it, I will throw in the SPOILER jump…
I have to admit that as unsettling and wince-inducing as the premise of the Doctor finds his off-spring could have been, it was handled fairly well here. I guess I was expecting to have the TARDIS turn up somewhere and the Doctor find some kind of clone or daughter that escaped the destruction of Gallifrey and went in expecting to rail against that. In fact, I already had three or four paragraphs on that subject written in my head. And, may I just say, man they were good.
Instead, we got a rather interesting way to spawn a prodigy for the Doctor.  Oh sure, it doesn’t make one lick of sense when you actually step back and think about it. But then again, Doctor Who, while I adore everything about it, isn’t necessarily known for its strict adherence to scientific accuracy.  I was willing to suspend my disbelief enough to see what kind of story they wanted to tell.
Alas, it’s the story they wanted to tell where things start to fall apart. The TARDIS arrives on a planet where two factions are fighting it out–humans and an alien-race called the Hath. The Hath are tall, fish-like creatures who don’t speak in a way that is translated for viewers. The war has been raging for generations the Doctor is told, based on creating copies of each generation using some type of machine. The copies come out fully grown and ready for combat. Both sides are battling for something called the Source and during his time there, the Doctor unlocks the way to find it. It’s then a race against time for both sides to get there and claim control of it first.
Along the way, you’ve got a lot of good old-fashioned cliches.  The TARDIS crew is seperated, there are lots of corridors to run down and there’s mortal danger at every turn.  Which is all well and good if the story is intersting. Alas, this one isn’t really.
Unlike “Fires of Pompeii” wehere I wasn’t engaged with the story for the first ten minutes, this one never fully engaged me. Even the central twist–the war has been going on a week because they’ve cloned out a multitude of generations on both sides falls completely flat if you sit back and think about it for more than a second.
Then, we come to the point of what the Source is. Seems the humans and Hath came to this world to colonize it together. And the Source is a terraforming device that will make the world habitable for both sides. At this point, the Doctor demands both sides give up their campaign of genocide and make working togther a foundation of their society.
Nice moment, but once again we come to my biggest issue with this season–the way in which the Doctor is becoming a legendary figure in the creation of mythologies for various places in the universe. Also, there’s a bit of hypocracy to what the Doctor says given that we know he wiped out his entire race and tried to wipe out the Daleks. Watching the story unfold, I felt like this point was better suited for the Eccleston Doctor than Tennant’s. Eccleston’s Doctor was driven by the guilt of what he’d done and such a decision or choice would have fit in better with his Doctor.
The other plotline is the daugther of the Doctor, given the name Jenny. Now, on the commentary Russell T. Daives swears up and down that it was just happy coincidence that they had a script about daughter for the Doctor and that the daughter of a former Doctor auditioned for the show.  I guess on an episode that calls for a lot of supsension of disbelief that one more huge leap shouldn’t be that big a deal. But yet I find that everyone concerned is protesting too much.
And it’s not that Moffatt was necessarily bad in the role. I found Jenny engaging and interesting. I did find it a bit much that we’ve set up a potential spin-off series for her or that we could meet her again. Or maybe she’ll evolve into the Rani. Who knows?
The thing is, the character is a one-off character that had a lot more potential that the story explores.  I feel as if we barely scratched the surface of the implications of Jenny and what she could mean to the Doctor.  Honestly, when they discussed her joining the TARDIS crew, part of me was intrigued to see how this could develop and I found myself a bit disappointed that they took the easiest way out of the storyline as possible.
All that said, I didn’t hate the episode. But I didn’t love it either. It was just sort of there. In the end, I feel a bit apatehtic about the story, seeing the potential for what could have been and wishing it had been explored.
Next up: The Doctor gets involved in an Agatha Christie mystery…
Couple of points I’d like to make.
1.
Good point Phil. 🙂
I am speechless with Phil’s oratory skilz0rz.
Yet again, I have to wonder if Mr. Hickerson saw the same episode I saw. I found the story quite engaging on two levels. First, it brings the issues about being a soldier briefly touched upon in The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky into a sharper focus. Remember how Donna complained to the Doctor about how he transformed Martha into a soldier in The Sontaran Strategem? Here we have another example of this in Jenny: biologically a Time Lord, mentally a soldier. Furthermore, like Donna, she points out the double standards of the Doctor (something David Tennant also mentions in the Confidential for this episode). While he disavows violence, the Doctor often finds himself quite good at planning and executing it.
The story is also a good exploration about unexpected fatherhood and the Doctor’s reaction to it. He first disavows Jenny, then disapproves of her, then grows to accept her, only to lose her in the end (at least for now anyway). I admit to being a relative newbie to Who and so I don’t know if this has been explored before. However, it felt fresh and engaging to me.
Sometimes, I wonder if Mr. Hickerson cannot see the forest for the trees. He looks for nits to pick rather than seeing the bigger scheme of the story. It does not help that he came into it with a preconceived negative attitude.
Needless to say, I find this review at best inaccurate. I liked the episode and look forward to the next one with anticipation.
Will,
I believe I can see the forest for the trees. Been a Who fan for 20 plus years now and the devil is in the details for me. When a show can hold together and do all the little things right, that’s when it becomes a classic for me.
I liked this episode, quite a lot. My cousin first got me into Doctor Who in time to catch the episode where the Doctor and his crew gets shrunk inside a school. So for me, the Doctor has always been a family man, and I hope they explore that more in the future. I loved his relation ship with his granddaughter, and if Jenny comes back, I hope we get a little back story, Especially for the old fogies who have been watching it since Bill Hartnell had the helm.
I particularly liked the way it ended. It was almost a cliff hanger, really. You know she will be back. It reminded me of the Doctor Who episodes of my youth. Several half hour bits, each ending in a rubber monster and a scream. I am still getting used to Doctor Who being wrapped up in one hour long episode (more or less). Part of me misses the old format. But I guess that is why you have the Sarah Jane Adventures.
I think it was rather weak, the story was full of plot holes you could fly a Star Destroyer through. Still I am looking forward to where the writers take Jenny and what she will mean to the whoniverse.
I thought it was fun, especially the end scene when she was flying off. But I am easy to please (everything is a lot more fun that way, though, so I am not complaining.)
Mr. Hickerson,
Stop worrying so much about the details and see whether or not the story is good. Classics are rarities; that’s why they are called classics. It is the high end of the bell curve when everything fits together. If these are your standards, your bar is too high.
I think this was a weak episode, as does Mr. H.
The war raging for generations being a week (what about the old guy?), seems silly.
There were too many things like this, and not a lot of meat in the story; almost as if the only reason for this episode was to introduce the Doctor’s daughter.
There were things I liked, as I do like the Doctor Who story line, and these characters; but I’d say this was the weakest story in [probably] the last two seasons.
PS: It is still a better than a lot of other Sci Fi TV out there, though.
Are you guys all demented?!?!?!?!
That was like one of the best episodes of the new series ever!
I absolutely Loved it!
It was an emotional journey.
The doctors daughter was such a fun and exciting character, she called him “Daddy†and was race up like a little child to hug him. While at the same time she had a good understanding of things.
I loved the way that the Doctor finally found that he really did love her, and like got upset more than useual when his daughter died.
He was so upset, and it was so upsetting that it nearly made me cry.
The doctor had found somthing great and fulfilling in his life, and it was taken away from him.
If she had not come back to life, then I might agree with you guys. But she did come back to life, which made it a GREAT and emotionally fulfilling episode.
I agree with Maddy. I really enjoyed the episode and I to wished Jenny would have stayed on the TARDIS but at the same time I had a feeling of joy when Jenny finally “jumpstarted” her regeneration powers to come back and shake off her gunshot.
I could see her playing up to the original Doctor’s idea of leaving home and running to explore the universe (sadly minus a TARDIS), but seeing as the universe is small when you have a Space-Time machine, I wouldn’t put it past the writers to write back Jenny into the program. Maybe Season 5 😛 I’m hoping, plus she’s a cutie. haha 😛
will we every see his daughter again
I thought it was great that she regenerated back to life at the end … er … but wasn’t she meant to trade in the old dead body and get a whole new different one like the Doctor does? But then again … WHO CARES … she’s gorgeous and I’m a bloke!
Now that it’s… well, after Season 5’s finale, I guess we know Jenny won’t be back and perhaps only River will be the returner from Tennant’s run. Anyway, given the season 4 finale, I think that Will’s comment on the soldiers in the Sontaran Strategem and the soldier reference in this episode were both running pieces of the season arc that ended with Davros’ bearing the Doctor’s true soul. That he won’t use weapons, but instead takes people and fashions them into weapons.
Only, with Jenny, he made her see that she had a choice, and so she stopped being a soldier. So, that’s sort of the back and forth that Who likes to give.
I do hope she comes back though, she is really cute like James said. Maybe season 6… I think she and Smith would work well together, though a little awkward in a father-daughter way, given their (lack) of age difference. Maybe I will write a script that integrates her into a another one-off and River Song can make some joke about the doctor really getting around before meeting her. Oh I do love River.