Is Rose the fourth series’ Bad Wolf? David Tennant is back for the fourth series of the revival Doctor Who…
Synopsis
The Doctor and Donna Noble, former “guest” companion at Christmastime two years ago, are investigating Adipose Industries, a company that is promoting an amazing new product – a weight loss pill that, in just three weeks, will help you loose all your excess fat. As they say, “The fat just walks away.”
The Doctor and Donna aren’t investigating together. They are both conducting their (nearly identical) investigations totally unaware that the other is around.
After poking around inside the company, they each go interview one of the one million test subjects. Both subjects attest to how amazing the product is. Just go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning with less fat.
The Doctor surmises that something – the fat itself – is literally walking out of the home of the subject. Meanwhile, Donna accidentally triggers something while interviewing a different subject. At first, cute little fat creatures start detaching themselves from the test subject.
When Mrs. Foster, the head Adipose, detects the accidental birth of the creatures in front of a witness, she steps of the power and causes the test subject to completely break down into little fat creatures. Donna, unfortunately, doesn’t actually witness this, but does see one of the creatures as it jumps out the window with a cheery wave.
Back inside Adipose, that night, a pointless journalist (pointless to the story, anyway) trying to get a scoop, gets captured. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Donna meet, run around, defeat Mrs. Foster’s plan to birth millions of these little Adipose babies from Great Britain’s great fat reserves.
Donna then leaves with the Doctor, after agreeing that she doesn’t want to have sex with him.
Analysis
Having watched the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential, I now know that the opening 20 minutes or so of the episode where the Doctor and Donna keep missing each other is brilliant comedy. However, until Russell T. Davies explained that to me, I just thought they didn’t have enough story to fill 45 minutes of screen time and just decided to kill some time at the beginning. Silly me. Had I known, I would have tried to raise a smirk at least.
That notwithstanding, it’s an interesting little story. There’s not much to it apart from running around, but the villainy is quite different, in that, had the Doctor not interfered, the final result would have been that millions of people would have safely lost a lot of weight. Certainly they would have been freaked out, but no physical harm would have some to them. It’s made clear in the episode that the woman who was killed was only done so because she witnessed a birth before it was time.
Mrs. Foster was breaking an intergalactic law pertaining to a protected primitive planet like Earth, but that’s never stopped any alien invaders before.
Once her plan was being exposed, she showed no remorse in her efforts to make sure her job was completed, and, in the end, she paid the price.
Catherine Tate, as Donna, is alright as a companion. I’ve never found Catherine Tate, or her comedy program, particularly funny. Playing the straight companion role, however, she does demonstrate a bit of comedic timing, which, if not overdone, could be a great addition to the program.
Sadly, once again, they’ve decided to saddle us with the companion’s family. Oh, for the days of orphan companions rescued from alien worlds by the Doctor.
I couldn’t believe it, but Donna’s grandfather is played by Bernard Cribbins, longtime English character actor, who has appeared in many shows, including one of the 1960’s Peter Cushing Doctor Who Dalek movies as a companion, The Avengers, Space: 1999, Fawlty Towers and Worzel Gummidge among many, many other things. I wouldn’t have recognized him – in fact, he was in Voyage of the Damned at Christmastime and I didn’t recognize him there, either. His character is supportive of Donna and her trip on the TARDIS and as such a welcome breath of fresh air. Meanwhile, Donna’s mother should be fed to the nearest Sontaran at the earliest convenience. Yet another harping old cow. What has RTD got against mothers and daughters? Perhaps this is telling us something more about RTD than might first meet the eye?
Finally, at the end of the episode, as Donna leaves with the Doctor, she speaks briefly with a stranger standing nearby. The stranger is revealed to us to be Rose Tyler, who literally fades away. First it was Bad Wolf, then Torchwood, then Mr. Saxon and now Rose Tyler. I expect we will be beat over the head with this a few more times before it becomes clear.
Next week: Pompeii – I love a good historical story and you can’t go wrong with a whopping great volcano about to blow up on your city. Or can you? Stay tuned to find out.