Doctor Who – Smith and Jones – Review

Doctor Who
Smith and Jones
by Russell T. Davies

starring David Tennant as the Doctor
and Freema Agyeman

Is a smarter, more analytical companion going to ask the Doctor a lot more tough questions about the holes in Russell T. Davies’ scripts?

The third series of the revival Doctor Who began on Saturday with a new companion, Martha Jones played by Freema Agyeman.

Synopsis

Martha Jones, medical student, is having what appears to be a typical day. Her family are in crisis and she seems to be the “go to” person in her family. But that’s just part of a typical day of the rounds at St. Swithen’s Teaching Hospital. Sorry, Royal Hope Hospital.

On the rounds, Martha meets Mr. Smith, a peculiar patient who talks about meeting Ben Franklin and has a double heartbeats.

The mystery of Mr. Smith is quickly forgotten when the hospital is sucked up and deposited on the moon. Everyone freaks out except Martha, which impresses the Doctor. (Mr. Smith was actually the Doctor.) He latches on to Martha and enlists her help.

Soon the Judoon arrive, Roman Centurian-like rhinoceroses. They are looking for a fugitive alien. The Doctor explains to Martha that they are police-for-hire. They’d transplanted the hospital to the moon as it is neutral territory and they have no jurisdiction on the Earth. They are looking for an alien, and that’s bad news for the Doctor.

Meanwhile, Ms. Finnegan, reveals herself to be the alien by sucking the blood out of the head consultant with a straw. She is using his blood to appear human to the Judoon’s scanners.

Lots of pointless running around follows and finally the Doctor sacrifices his life, tricking Ms. Finnegan into drinking his blood so the Judoon will spot her as an alien. They kill her, Martha revives the Doctor, the Judoon return the hospital to Earth.

The Doctor invites Martha to take “just one trip” with him as reward for saving his life.

Analysis

There’s really not a lot going on in this story. It reminds me a lot of episode 3 of virtually any Tom Baker-era four parter. A lot of running up and down corridors, not much plot.

Like the episode Rose, this story is really about Martha. As a companion, she shows great promise. She’s smart, analytical and good looking. (Although, the Doctor should really get a good look at Martha’s mom, because acorns don’t fall from the the tree and if ever I saw a character I expect to turn out a scary alien, she’s it.)

It’s a typical Russell T. Davies story and it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, so, I’ll try not to scrutinize much, but the episode had a few things worth mentioning/picking on.

Items of interest:

• The Doctor is clearly evaluating Martha as a companion. This would mark the first time the Doctor has been seen to be actively looking for a companion. While he obviously has run across people to take as companions in the past, this time it’s almost as if he’s auditioning her.
• “I had a brother, once.” said the Doctor. If that isn’t a clear foreshadowing of events to come, I don’t know what is. When he mentioned being a parent last series, that was clearly to jar Rose’s perception of her place in his life. This time, it’s bound to be a marker of things to come.

  Who is the Doctor’s brother? In the 1970’s there was a lot of speculation, some fostered by Pertwee and the production crew that the Doctor and the Master are brothers. After brining back the Daleks and the Cybermen, the Master is the next logical choice. (My opinion, he should have come back first.)

• “Mr. Saxon, says…” This was the first of this season’s references to Mr. Saxon and it comes at the end of the episode on the radio. There’s also a “Vote Saxon” sign in the alley. What Doctor Who would be complete without shoehorning some idiotically out-of-place nonsense into every episode. Please, Russell, please, please stop already with the stupid season “themes”.
• Is Mr. Saxon the Master? We know he’s played by John Simm from Life on Mars. He hasn’t got the requisite beard to play the Master. Perhaps he’s in disguise.
• The Judoon had little to do in this episode, in fact, they weren’t much of anything. I bet their costumes cost a fortune, though. Hmmmm… expensive alien costumes, lots of them, given back story (rent-a-cops), not given anything to do. Can you say, “They’ll be back later this season”?
• The Cheap Kiss. Seriously, what a crock that was. I can see the pre-production meeting. “We need something big for the teaser trailer to introduce the new companion.” “How about a kiss?” “Perfect! But, how to we justify that?” “Don’t worry, the audience are idiots, I’ll just write any old crap to explain it.”
• Does this plot device make sense? The Judoon have no jurisdiction on the Earth and have to go to the hassle of brining an entire hospital to the moon. Stealing a hospital off the Earth is in their jurisdiction??! And why is our moon neutral territory? That makes no sense.
• Why do we have to have another annoying family to waste precious screen time on? This family is even more annoying than Rose’s small but dysfunctional family group.

Alright… a few nit-picks.

• If the Judoon were looking for a plasmavore (which they were) and they were prepared enough to transplant an entire hospital to the moon (which they did), wouldn’t have had enough foresight to use scanners that could detect a plasmavore even if it had sucked some local blood?
• If the Judoon had to worry about jurisdiction, and they put the hospital back when done, clearly they had some obligation to prevent harm from the humans. If they didn’t have to protect them, and they object was to track down and kill the alien, why bother bringing along a force field full of air? Why not just suffocate them and locate the body afterwards? If the did have to protect human life, why didn’t they have a plan for providing oxygen?
• Perhaps it was shifty directing, but it appears Martha moves around the hospital looking out the windows. Why is the Earth visible out every window?
• All those people screaming like little girls. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be terrifying, but, it was a bit overdone, and was the damage to the hospital. Am I really supposed to believe during the transfer somebody pushed the acoustic ceiling tiles out and pulled the wires down?
• Electricity? Yes, hospitals have gas-powered generators, but that drives only a subset of the power for the hospital, not everything. Why wasn’t some of the lighting shut down, and how did they have enough power for Ms. Finnegan to setup a burst of radiation strong enough to wipe out half the Earth? If MRI machines are that powerful, they need to be banned right now.

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