Mars, what a dump! It is another one of those bloody base under siege episodes, I am sick of these under siege episodes. They are always a bit drab and there is hardly ever anything interesting about them. In fact, one of the few times there are, it just happens to feature Clara. Though I might like Clara a bit in that Russian episode, I still hate her overall. Speaking of characters I hate, the Doctor can get right in the bin at this point. Tennant was in full, “I am leaving and I love Doctor Who, so I am going to bring all the emotional baggage of that character with me.” There is a problem with that. If a character has that much baggage and desperately tries to show it, you aren’t a very good character.

I’ll do this now; because I have a lot to get through next week with a double-bill. I have all of Gallifreyan history to explain in the episode and to my editor Alexx, glee over Wilf finally getting his adventure (which made me cry a bit the other week), and so much more. Two of the biggest Doctor Who fans that are brilliant actors did in fact, get to play the character and would do some of my favorite work in the show. However, because Peter Capaldi and David Tennant are two massive nerds that watched all of Classic-Who, they try to bring that to the character towards the end of each respective actor’s regeneration. They are actors, that’s what they do.

However, two of the best incarnations of the Doctor have come from two men who’d never bothered with the show before. I’ve spoken about this at length, Eccleston brought every single bit of shell shock, soldier’s heart, PTSD, or however you want to characterize it. He not only instilled the perfect amount of horror behind his eyes but also every bit of repression within his actions. Meanwhile, there is a quote from Steven Moffat in The Guardian captured from the Edinburgh International TV Festival, in which he says beautifully of Matt Smith, “It is like a young man built by old men from memory.” Matt Smith is a very striking and attractive man, but even in his mid-20s, he wore the face of a thousand-year-old alien that had survived countless wars.

What happens with Capaldi and Tennant is that they want to make sure everyone in the back knows that, even those new to the show. I love and cherish both for different reasons. With Capaldi, of course, it is that “The Zygon Inversion” speech. It is the consequence of the Last Great Time War and it is wonderfully Doctor Who. For Tennant, it has to be those moments in “Blink,” “The Girl in the Fireplace,” and all the times he was the fun adventure Doctor. Though at the same time, both have their moments of depressing, needlessly grandstanding, and just plain wrong moments.

This episode is very much one of those and it is not just Tennant’s fault, it is Davies writing the character into a corner so that his only solution is to postulate. However, when it comes down to it, Tennant’s entire character, as under his control, is built to do this very thing. He breaks the rules. Not just Matt Smith’s cheeky regenerations (spoilers!), but very much his own rules, his people’s rules, and the rules as defined in every single way. He saves several people who are destined to die, and yet he’s spent the entire episode telling himself that he needs to go, leave, and not be here because he knows that is what he’ll do. That is who he is.

He is the man who cares on a planet of hatred, standing in the Gusev crater inside Bowie Base One, surrounded by the first humans on Mars on the day they are going to die. If it wasn’t for the ending, and if it wasn’t for Tennant’s desire to bring everything, it would have been fine. A fine episode with a crap monster in another base that is under siege. Coming back and watching without that childish hyper temperament I had when I first watched it, I love Adelaide she’s great. I love the idea of the Doctor being given an older woman with an understanding, not only of some situations but of herself. She’s a one-off blend of Martha and Evelyn Smythe, two of the best companions ever.

Though, let’s get to that monster thing before I talk about suicide. They are like crap zombies for a 6-7 PM family show that touches on a bit of horror, and that’s fine. However, this was the third special of Doctor Who following series 4’s finale. “The Next Doctor” played with horror as the stompy Cybermen made their usual introduction.

The darkest that episode got was Child labor, something I endorsed back in my Frostpunk review. “Planet of the Dead” had its moments, but the darkest it would go is explaining the planet of sand. The sand the Doctor licked, was in fact the population of the planet before the metal stingray aliens killed everyone and turned them to sand. Otherwise, it is very light.

“The Waters of Mars” is just straddling the camp B-movie thing with humans infected like zombies with a water parasite all the way to the end. The problem I have is, they never really feel like a threat. Sure, there are three of them by 20-30 minutes into the episode, but so often we’re blocked off from them behind doors, locked in tunnels, or out on the surface of Mars. We spend so much time with the team and the Doctor that the monster, as it were, isn’t in the back of your head.

The makeup job doesn’t help, just making them a bit… soggy? I’m not knocking the makeup, I just don’t see the massive threat in someone with a mouth like the back of my hands in winter (cracked and frayed) spilling water about the place. They look too human, too “normal” to be the reason to enact Action 1: the evacuation of the base, and (action 5) detonation of the nuclear warhead at the heart of the base. I simply can’t find the logic of their threat beyond the exposition that if they get to Earth, that’s all of humanity in the bin. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but when either Earth or the Doctor are threatened, no one honestly believes that’s how the episode ends.

To tie back into the Clara episode I was on about earlier with the wonderful old Russian man that lists to 80s pop, it is Mars. A future Mars, when all the Martians are long gone and the snow and ice have disappeared, but it is Mars nonetheless. If there is something in the water, the Doctor (of course) suspects it is the Ice Warriors; the great race of beings that once inhabited the Martian landscape. Yet it is never outright said they are the fault, the idea is just floated with the focus on the action returning once we’re done with Adelaide’s wonderful backstory.

What is outright stated several times over and for 40-50 minutes of the episode is that the Doctor shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be there because he can’t help and he shouldn’t help. What happens in that base sets in stone the future of the human race going into the stars and exploring what is out there. If he changes that, history itself will bend and what once was set in stone doing good will be in question. His entire race of people (if you ignore “The Timeless Children,” which I do) were founded on the ideals of watching and simply observing. They pride themselves never changing fixed points in history following the Minyans nuclear war, that’s if you ignore Rassilon and Romanadvoratrelunder’s involvement with the C.I.A. (Celestial Intervention Agency).

The point I am trying to make is, while it is stated throughout the show’s near 50-years history at this point and re-enforced here several times over, the rule stands you shouldn’t intervene in set points of history. Yet (seemingly on a whim) on the desire to buck against his long-dead people of Gallifrey, he just snaps and wants to save Adelaide and her crew at the last minute after losing the German as played by one of the episode’s worst actors. Then it is the crap American theater actor, followed by the alright-ish Australian.

That just leaves Lindsay Duncan’s Adelaide, Gemma Chan’s Mia, and Aleksandar Mikić’s Yuri, all with the manic Doctor who grandstands to the last minute on Mars. This is only made worse by Tennant’s line on Earth, “Isn’t anyone gonna thank me?” No, you’ve said it several times yourself, that was a fixed point in history, a time that inspired Adelaide Brooke’s grandaughter to reach for the stars leading the rest of humanity into deep space. What exactly are they thanking you for?

“Oh, but he saved their lives, now they can–” I’ll cut you off there. Adelaide goes in her house and kills herself because she knows it is right, she knows that this tall dark-haired man who just happened to walk onto her base on Mars shouldn’t have done that. She knows that if someone has all that power, they are going to abuse it and that’s what he just did, abuse his power of time travel. He states that he’s done it before for “little people,” but who has the right to decide who the little people are? At that moment, he’s not the Doctor, he’s hardly the Time-Lord he’s meant to be, he’s the villain of the story, standing on the edge of the bridge across to who the Master is.

The entire “Time-Lord victorious” thing is what really annoys me the most. It is a poorly scripted (and acted) piece of villainy just to put the Doctor on the dark side of history for once. The problem I have with it is not only the phrasing that Duncan’s delivery can’t save on her derision, but how little the scene’s effect lasts. We get a few moments of an angry and vindictive Doctor before Adelaide shoots herself and he just snaps back to his normal self. It is an ending that tries to condense so much into just a few minutes, and it shows too many cracks.

If this was a middle of the series budget episode without that ending, I’d think of it well enough but not love it. What drags down the frivolous Mars adventure is spending too much of the episode letting the Doctor wrestle with himself and everything he’s stood for, only to quickly create an inconsistency within who he really is. If he was this quick to change his mind on one of his core principles, why doesn’t he just go back and “save” Donna?

The entire episode uses the near 50-years of Who to create this indecision he dances with, only for a few minutes of a darker Doctor that just isn’t likable. All to spend the last two minutes of the episode where he regrets the actions. Next Time James Bond is revealed as a Time Lord, we don’t get to see Romanadvoratrelonder or as she like’s to be called Fred, Wilf is perfection as only Bernard Cribbins can be, and… “My god, she’s a cactus.”

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Doctor Who "The Waters Of Mars"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• I like the gay Russian bloke, he's nice.
• Adelaide Brooke is one of those good one-off companions.

Cons

• I hate the Doctor a majority of the episode.
• Do we need more zombie like aliens?