Home

The Doctor's Daughter

  • warning: array_fill() [function.array-fill]: Number of elements must be positive in /home/shawware/drupal-6.24/includes/database.inc on line 253.
  • warning: implode() [function.implode]: Invalid arguments passed in /home/shawware/drupal-6.24/includes/database.inc on line 253.
  • warning: array_keys() expects parameter 1 to be array, null given in /home/shawware/drupal-6.24/modules/user/user.module on line 528.
  • user warning: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')' at line 1 query: SELECT p.perm FROM uhm_role r INNER JOIN uhm_permission p ON p.rid = r.rid WHERE r.rid IN () in /home/shawware/drupal-6.24/modules/user/user.module on line 528.
Posted by david at Sun, 2008/08/10 - 22:42 on doctor who | sf | tv
Show Doctor Who / Series IV / Episode 7
First Broadcast 2008/08/10 - 19:30 (Link: ABC Details)
Related Links Dr Who Guide
Previous EpisodeThe Poison Sky
Next EpisodeThe Unicorn and the Wasp

The new series of Doctor Who has broken some new ground, but has mainly built on what we knew. Here was a chance to introduce something ground-breaking and for mine, they blew it.

The title and the promo for this week's episode implied we'd meet the Doctor's daughter. Whether the Doctor had children is something long speculated about, but never fully addressed in the series. It was never even clear that Susan was his actual grand-daughter, or whether her calling the Doctor "grandfather" was just a term of endearment.

So when it became apparent, very early in the episode, that the Doctor's daughter was the result of a tissue sample and some form of cloning, it was disappointing to say the least. This kind of ruined the episode for me. Upon reflection it wasn't too bad - fairly standard stuff - but with the added tension of the Doctor originally denying Jenny was his daughter before gradually accepting her. And then she was killed off.

Some interesting ideas are explored during the episode. Is Jenny a Time Lord? Is the Doctor a soldier? This seems to answered in the affirmative: the Doctor strategises, has a weapon (the sonic screwdriver), fights to stop the fighting - all things that Jenny says are just like her. The TARDIS bringing them to Messaline is explained as detecting Jenny - hence the Doctor's hand appearing in the first scene - however they arrived too soon and caused her creation - a paradox.

There was an explicit admission from the Doctor that he had a child in the past, but his family was lost in the Time War. And the episode was saved by the final scene where Jenny did regenerate (or at least resuscitate) with the same golden streams of energy that followed the Doctor's most recent regeneration. Hopefully she'll be back.

Most of the coverage of this episode makes a big deal of the fact that Jenny is played by Georgia Moffett, who is the daughter of Peter Davison, who played the fifth Doctor. Her best friend at school was the daughter of Colin Baker, who played the sixth Doctor.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Internal paths in double quotes, written as "internal:node/99", for example, are replaced with the appropriate absolute URL or relative path.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <sup> <sub> <h1> <h2> <h3> <img> <acronym> <strike>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Images can be added to this post.
  • Filtered words will be replaced with the filtered version of the word.

More information about formatting options