River Song

Ok, this weeks episode of Doctor Who introduced a character played by ER actress Alex Kingston. The character goes by the name of River Song, but who is she?

Ok so the important things:

The Doctor and Donna arrive at "The Library." The biggest library in existence, because someone (it later turns out to be River Song) sends him a message on his psychic paper.
This library contains a copy of every book in the universe up to that point- Most of which Donna is not allowed to look at because they don't exist yet. No Spoilers, warns the Doctor.

Ok, so the message River sends the Doctor has a cute little x at the end.
As Donna pointed out, who sends messages with little x's unless they know the person?
When the Doctor and River meet, she is clearly surprised that the Doctor doesn't recognise her, and some of the dialogue from this episode clearly implies that River and the Doctor have some sort of history with one another, from Rivers perspective at least. Its a sort of "future history" and for the Doctor, it hasn't happened yet.

Oh! Very quickly! The swarmy things!

When the Doctor arrives, as per Rivers instruction -to the library- there are some pretty odd things going on. Specifically, little creatures that live in the darkness and feed on flesh are swarming. Bad news for those of us who are made of flesh. So the swarmy creatures go around killing off the other guys on River's expedition, people who I'm sure are only there to get killed off? Because other than that, their purpose is lost on me, as they don't really do anything.

And the little girl..

And of course there is the little girl who apparently has some sort of connection to the library, it seems, that she's able to appear in the library, and has some control over what happens there.
In the real world, the girl is being seen by a psychiatrist, because of course her parents think her library is all in her head. So, her Doctor is trying to fix her little problem and get her back into the real world, or so it seems.
It later because obvious that there's a little more going on when her Doctor tells her (paraphrased) "There's the real world and the nightmare world, your nightmare world is the real world, the library is real and people need your help" etcetera etcetera.

Ok, so back to River.
She's the most exiting thing in this episode, the mystery that is River Song. The rest just seems kind of, meh!
As she later explains, she's accidentally summoned the Doctor too early in his timeline, so, she knows him but she doesn't know her.
And then there is her little book.. Which is -weirdly- TARDIS-ish in design -not that it uses any sort of chameleon/timelord technology- it just looks like the outside of the doctors tardis. Anyway... The Doctor is not allowed to look in this book, its against the rules, his rules apparently. No Spoilers Doctor.
The dialogue seems to imply that she travelled with the Doctor, or will travel, to be more precise. She knows who Donna is, she has her little diary- "Today the Doctor and i went all around the universe and it was so much fun!"
She even has her own sonic screwdriver, which the Doctor gave her, and its also identical to the one he currently uses..
She is definitely the "big thing" this episode, forget the little girl and the swarm and the Whovian version of redshirts, and the fact that Donna gets turned into this weird mechanical thing with a face- apparently she's been saved. Oh and the hundreds of people that disappeared in the library and probably got turned into mechanical face robots. Actually that reminds me, maybe the little girl is one of the library victims, and she befall the same fate as Donna and the other library "assistants"? Maybe we'll se Donna in her own little fantasy world next week.
All of that feels kind of irrelevant though, it doesn't matter because it'll all be resolved next week.

Doctor Who seems to be more "monster of the week-y" than ever. Not necessarily a bad thing, but i live for those big moments. Those glimpses of the future. This episode had me giddy, for that reason.
So, River, one of the Doctors future companions? Probably..
Most likely an important one. His next one, maybe.

Is it bad that the only thing i care about from this episode is River? That the rest is kind of... mediocre television. The story was, unfortunately pretty dull. Doctor Who used to have me gripped, but this episode was far from on par with the greats.

I'm hoping that next week will have me unable to tear my eyes away from the screen.

T'Leisha

Little Miss Timelord

I have to say that i am pleased with "The Doctor's Daughter" which is the sixth episode of season four of Doctor Who.
I just watched it and yet again, we get another near-absolute masterpiece from Russell T Davis and Co.
David Tennant was of course brilliant- Which makes the rumours that he is leaving the series all the more difficult to accept.
I saw a review of the first episode after it aired (Partners in Crime) in the News of the World. It heavily criticised Tennant's performance. To paraphrase; It said "perhaps it's time to regenerate?"
I didn't understand it at the time and i definitely don't understand it now. Perhaps i am biased since i love David Tennant.
Back to the episode- Georgia Moffat was an absolute star, and since we saw "Jenny" regenerate (sort of- more of a revival really) at the end of the episode (although her appearance didn't change, perhaps a result of her odd creation)
she will likely be returning, which can only be a good thing.
I liked the story surrounding the hath and the humans on messaline, especially the "war raged for generations but it turns out its just a week" thing. Nice touch. Really the plot was pretty simple- war bad. Peace good. Doctor saves the day. The human/Hath struggle gave us some pretty good drama even though it was just the b-story, and really- obviously just a way to introduce Jenny. The real story here is of course the Doctor's daughter. I loved the personal struggle those two endured during this episode- The Doctor refusing to accept Jenny for who and what she was right up until the end- It had some pretty intense moments, and emotional repercussions for the Doctor that drew the viewer deeper into his psyche. I have to tell you, by the time she had died and the episode was drawing to a close and it began to seem less likely that she was going to regenerate- i had began to feel some concern.
All i could think was "why would they spend an entire episode on her and then just kill her, whats the point?" but Davis and Co haven't let me down yet, and they didn't disappoint me here either.
Thankfully that "better late than never" regeneration came along just at the right time to quell the tears.
So what next for our dear Jenny?
Was her introduction to the show just a precursor to another spin-off? This time with a hip young female timelord? I hope not.
I really don't think another spin-off is the right way to go with this. Although it would probably make those "i want the doctor to regenerate into a woman" guys go away for a while, i don't think adding another spin-off to the mix is really going to do anything good for Doctor Who. There comes a time when one has to say "you've taken it too far, enough is enough." I'd imagine if they're going to do this, they'd chuck it into next year, when we are only going to have a few Doctor Who specials, instead of a full season.
Maybe she's coming back for the last few episodes?
I hope so, this will be good to see, although from what i hear, everyone is going to be in the last episode. It'll be a weird reunion of sorts, Doctor, Donna, Martha, Jack, Rose and Jackie and probably Mickey. Damn i hate Mickey...
It would be good to add Jenny to the equation. That could be explosive.
Or another possibility...
Since we know that Catherine Tate is leaving at the end of this season, and we don't yet know who the next companion is going to be...
... Could it be Jenny?
Now i have heard some speculation that Rose is coming back for the next season, and that she will be the companion again, but this all might just be something out of nothing. Admittedly i may have perpetuated these rumours but hey.. What's a girl to do?
I for one would cry tears of joy if Jenny was our next companion, i am just dying to see more father daughter bonding.
They work especially well together.
"The man who never would" just gets better and better, and this episode offered us yet another chance to look into his past.
The scene where he told Donna that he was a father once and had a family was more than just a little sad- He tells her that the loss of his first family left a hole inside of him that couldn't be filled.

It was done well and it was a lovely touch on Doctor Who mythology.

I guess in regards to the Doctor's daughter's return, we'll just have to wait and see.

Now, okay- good stuff done.
Here comes the bad stuff..
Have you ever noticed that the music on Doctor Who is unnecessarily overpowering? I'm not talking about the piece of course, the actual music is consistently good. Its just.. I've missed about half the dialogue since Doctor Who began because the music is just too damn loud. They could really do with toning it down a lot.

I didn't fail to notice, that this episode used pretty much the same plot devices as last week's and the week befores The Poison Sky and The Sontaran Stratagem, respectively. I've now pretty much had my fill of military/cloning story lines.

Another common Doctor Who problem is that everything is always so tightly packed into the episode- something that isn't always a bad thing but in this case, i think they needed longer to fully explore the Doctor/Jenny relationship.
All in all though, we had our usual Doctor Who standards, and despite the occasional problems that they might have- they've always got an amazing story to tell.*
Right, well I'm off to save planets and defeat bad guys and... yeah whatever.

T'Leisha

*The two exception's to that are the first and second worst episodes of Doctor Who- "That annoying one with Peter Kay that i don't even remember the name of and never want to see again..." and "Voyage of the Damned."