Return to Tomorrow by: John Kingsbridge and directed by: Ralph Senensky

 

“Return to Tomorrow” is written by John Kingsbridge, a pseudonym for John T. Dugan, and is directed by Ralph Senensky.  It was filmed under production code 51, was the 20^th episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 49^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on February 9, 1968.

 

Sometimes Star Trek does such a brilliant job of cloaking their progressive messaging, something too intense for the time period.  “Return to Tomorrow” is one of those times, the initial reading on my viewing being one of being pro-euthanasia and pro-quality of life as a reason to enact euthanasia.  This is done through a race of godlike aliens having lost their bodies, using, initially with consent, Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Ann Mulhall, played by Diana Muldaur, to build android replacements to they can continue living.  This is already an interesting idea, Star Trek establishing a core philosophy that the classic science fiction trope of transplanting one’s brain into android bodies creating an imitation in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and “I, Mudd”, but “Return to Tomorrow” decides to largely ignore these ideas so the aliens can make their own bodies throughout the episode before deciding at the end that, no, while it would be closer to life than the holding pattern they were in at the beginning of the episode, it wouldn’t truly be life.  The two surviving aliens, Sargon and Thalassa, die in an embrace in Kirk and Mulhall’s bodies, their last moments being one final kiss which is a bittersweet ending for these characters.  Because the aliens have taken the bodies of our characters, this is one of the few episodes where the main crew of the Enterprise are in the background, though sadly this doesn’t mean characters like Sulu, Uhura, or Scotty are given a greater focus.  McCoy and Nurse Chapel get quite a bit of focus due to the main conflict of the episode becoming the third of these aliens, Henoch, being power hungry, creating a formula to kill Kirk and Sargon so he can rule.

 

This means that Leonard Nimoy’s performance in the episode is a particular highlight of the series overall.  While Nimoy is a very nuanced actor whenever he’s portraying Spock, playing Henoch he is allowed to really cut loose and play an evil character.  The performance goes over the top almost immediately, hypnotizing Nurse Chapel and almost laughing at her protests of creating a poisoned hypodermic needle.  The hypnosis is an incredibly fun little plot thread that adds some very nice drama between the characters, especially as the resolution of the episode involves Spock’s consciousness briefly jumping into Nurse Chapel to play into the unrequited love story between their characters.  Majel Barrett doesn’t get too much to play off as Spock, but the few moments she does get are solid and show that as an actress she is capable when given material and not just regulated to being a nurse.  Diana Mulduar is also an interesting single episode actress since the Wikipedia page for this episode reveals that she will eventually be a regular playing a different doctor in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Mulhall is a character clearly written to be a single episode love interest for Kirk, but Dugan’s script goes to great lengths to make Sargon distinct from Kirk, William Shatner giving an unusual performance since for much of the episode he is not actually playing Kirk.  James Doohan is also responsible for voicing Sargon, though it’s a little difficult to tell if he is also overdubbing Shatner, there are scenes where it is clearly Shatner but others where it’s not entirely clear.  Sargon as a character is wise, and directly written to be an inspiration for human gods which is sadly not really explored, but allowed to be flawed.  It adds this nice action to the story being very explicitly human.

 

Overall, while “Return to Tomorrow” as a title makes absolutely no sense, it’s one of those episodes of Star Trek that genuinely should be remembered for being an absolute highlight.  It hits on an incredibly standard Star Trek idea, but it also stands out incredibly unique.  Ralph Senensky once again brings a romantic tone to the direction of the episode while the performances are on top form with John T. Dugan requesting a pseudonym for a script that he really should have been proud of writing.  9/10.

The Last Unicorn by: Peter S. Beagle

 

“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.”  These words open Peter S. Beagle’s most famous novel The Last Unicorn, which perfectly encapsulates the loneliness that is at the core of the novel.  The unicorn is the last of her kind, the world having moved on from the need for great myths of Robin Hood and the like, the real magicians becoming less and less known, and cursed kingdoms finally falling to be ruled by a fair prince.  It’s Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and Grimm’s fairy tales all wrapped up in one and Beagle knows it.  Originally published in 1968, Beagle took two years to write the completed manuscript, beginning as a very different story.  It got away from him so to speak, but that’s okay, the best stories often do.  I must confess, The Last Unicorn was not a story from my childhood, nor was it something that came into my life at a pivotal moment.  It’s a story I’d heard good things about, so I read it and like the original manuscript had with Beagle, it’s a story that perhaps got away from me rather quickly.  Read over a couple of days, Beagle’s prose is a beautiful reflection of fairy tales and what it means to exist in a rapidly changing world.  Beagle is directly evolving Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, except the elves haven’t left Middle Earth of choice in this metaphor.  A midnight carnival shows pale imitations of the great myths and legends, bar two, but people enjoy being fooled and will pay good money for it.

 

The old king Haggard has lived too long and wasted away with his son Lir, the evil king being the quintessential human villain, a villain of human apathy after gaining full power.  The magician Schmendrick only wants power for his own purpose while ex-bandit Molly Grue is incredibly cynical about myths and legends.  The first meeting of Molly Grue and the unicorn is the first and best showing of the novel’s thesis, Molly despairing for the unicorn did not come to her in her childhood.  She had to grow and move on, the unicorn eventually becoming human due to a moment of desperation on Schmendrick’s part, something that adds the bittersweet nature of the end of the novel, it follows Tolkien’s elves and leaves the land, though unlike the end of The Lord of the Rings, nobody can follow her into the sunset.  The love story that defines the back half of the novel, but it’s a love story that was doomed from the beginning.  The characters are still left at the end to make their own way in the world, changed forever, but still having to move on with their lives as does the rest of the world.  Beagle writes a novel that is intentionally contradictory in terms of its world, wrapping itself deeply in thematic relevance and lengthy prose, but always throwing in these little touches and impossible references that throws the reader off intentionally.

 

The Last Unicorn is a modern example of a universal story, emulating those told from parent to child with details changing but at its core having a deeper theme towards humanity and existence.  The characters are familiar, all being some direct reference to a previous tale that has entered the public consciousness, and it’s a book that is there to say it’s okay to grow up and change.  That’s just a necessary part of life.  While this review mainly made a few of the obvious allusions to Tolkien, it’s also very much a response to the writings of Lewis, and begins its own branching path in the development of fantasy as a storytelling medium.  Despite this branch not becoming the main branch of the genre, it’s a beautiful branch that brought a tear to my eye.  10/10.

Borne by: Jeff VanderMeer

 

There is something fascinating when science fiction decides there’s an opportunity to throw out the stark, technical descriptions of the classic writers of the genre and do something surreal.  After all, as a speculative fiction genre there are many ways to fulfill that speculation.  Jeff VanderMeer is an author whom I’ve only read one book from before this, the novella Annihilation, which was an incredibly surreal experience.  Jumping to a full length novel from VanderMeer is by no means any less surreal, though it is a far more linear and accessible experience than the complete madness of Annihilation.  Borne is a novel VanderMeer uses to explore themes of what it means to be alive and to be human, spending much of the time contemplating through his characters an alien morality and the purpose of humanity in a world where they are no longer the apex of society.  The setting of Borne is at some point in the future, humanity having wiped itself out and the survivors are living, many mutated and changed due to biological technologies, in a city that’s long degrading due to a callous, amoral overlord.  This callous, amoral overlord is the flying bear Mord, a clearly intelligent creature but not one that sea humans on its level.  VanderMeer shows Mord only through the perspective of scavenger Rachel, our point of view for the novel, and as Rachel is one of the few humans left to spend her days searching the rubble, her narration isn’t necessarily a reliable one.  VanderMeer’s prose is intentionally written to be off-kilter, the descriptions are often brief but rooted in human universals applied to an entirely strange situation.  Rachel isn’t aware of the oddities in the post-apocalyptic future, thus the prose reads normal but finds its way into the reader’s head in a way that I can only compare to being almost under the influence of mild psychedelics.

 

Rachel as a character is also this person of uncertainty.  She has a daily routine that is disrupted by taking this thing off Mord, has a partner that is clearly meant to be read as romantic but intentionally written as a relationship of circumstance, and the entire novel is her growth to find a purpose in an especially uncaring world.  The title Borne comes from the thing Rachel finds on Mord one day, an initially anemone like creature depicted on the cover that radically transforms and grows throughout the novel.  This is Borne and it is a remnant of the Company, the biotech firm heavily implied to be responsible for ending the world  When involving the Company (always with a capital C), VanderMeer clearly intends for it to be read as capitalism leading to a lack of oversight in biotechnology leading to the destruction.  Rachel’s partner, Wick, does not trust Borne and he has every right not to.  Borne is a creature of contradictions, being seen to grow and learn whenever Rachel isn’t around, feeding on living and dead things alike, and slowly learning to exist and inhabit the world.  While referred to as he, it is truly represented as an it, allowing he because it only has Rachel as a frame of reference.  As with Rachel, Borne has to discover its purpose and as VanderMeer gives it more intelligence the more it realizes how amoral it is.  It is a simulacrum of life at first and that keeps the reader on guard throughout the novel, as Rachel and the reader can never truly understand it’s intentions.  While cosmic horror is not what VanderMeer is explicitly doing, Borne is something that can’t really be understood, yet by the end of the novel it has a purpose and it’s own agency.  Once Borne is explained VanderMeer has primed the reader for nothing but sympathy despite its horrific actions throughout the novel, the final sequence explaining the purpose and ending on this beautiful happy/sad moment of Rachel by a window.

 

Overall, while Borne is equally as surreal as the one other work by Jeff VanderMeer I have read, it is nevertheless an incredibly engaging novel.  Like many of the great works of science fiction it is often very contemplative and interested in humanity’s future while exploring an intended purpose of technology and the universe.  While perhaps just a little predictable in some areas it’s still this wonderful read and perhaps the better introduction to VanderMeer than the book he is more well known for.  9/10.

Silence in the Library & Forest of the Dead by: Steven Moffat and directed by: Euros Lyn

 

“Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble with Alex Kingston as Prof. River Song, Colin Salmon as Dr. Moon, Eve Newton as the Girl, Steve Pemberton as Strackman Lux, Jessika Williams as Anita, Talulah Riley as Miss Evangelista, Harry Peacock as Proper Dave, and O.T. Fagbenie as Other Dave.  They were written by: Steven Moffat and directed by: Euros Lyn with Helen Raynor as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  They were originally broadcast on Saturdays from 31 May to 7 June 2008 on BBC One.

 

July 17, 2007 was the date when showrunner Russell T. Davies made the offer to Steven Moffat to take over production of Doctor Who for its fifth series to be produced in 2009 and aired in 2010.  After three rigorous years of production, the fourth only just beginning, and the approval to forgo a full series in 2009, Russell T. Davies realized that if the show were to succeed as it had in its original 26 year run, there would come a point where the reigns would have to be handed over and Steven Moffat was the obvious choice.  All three of his previous episodes were critically lauded and it was a position he had always wished, making him the obvious choice for the role.  Now, Moffat actually took time to put things in place before accepting the offer in late October, but in addition to the offer, and to make up for not being able to deliver a two-part story for the third series, Davies offered Moffat the second two-part slot in the fourth series.  After writing “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances”, Moffat had several ideas and proposed “Silence in the Library” and “The Doctor Runs”, set in a library that is actually a planet, in the initial 2006 idea menaced by angels, but after “Blink” having characters menaced by shadows instead.  With the acceptance of the showrunner position, Moffat developed the character of Professor River Song, somebody intended to be recurring once he took over as showrunner, allowing future references with the intention that David Tennant would be staying on for a fifth series after the specials.  As the scripts developed some integral ideas were changed, the Doctor Moon was made just a computer program and not a future incarnation of the Doctor, the real life version of the character Lee was not revealed as an overweight woman (which even for the time sounds like an awful joke to make), and the second episode would go through several titles.  By the time production started under director Euros Lyn in the eighth production block, it was “Forest of the Night”, but as Davies developed the following episode “Midnight”, Moffat suggested “Children of the Library”, “A River Song Ending”, and “River’s Run” which it would have broadcast as until post-production.  Julie Gardner would ask Moffat for a final title going through several more including “Return of the Dead” and “Saved” before finally settling on “Forest of the Dead”.

 

“Silence in the Library” opens with one of the odder pre-titles sequences in the show’s history and one that feels slightly ineffective for the episode that follows.  It is an at home therapy session between Dr. Moon, played by Colin Salmon, and a little girl, played by Eve Newton.  The girl imagines a library that is big but empty and is somehow invaded by the Doctor and Donna.  While not a bad sequence, or a bad idea, flashing back to the Doctor and Donna in the TARDIS as leadup to this moment makes the initial scenes after the opening titles feel odd, especially when there’s quite a bit of time in between the sequences of just the Doctor and Donna exploring the library.  These scenes emphasize the silence and emptiness of the library, something that is already an interesting opening, especially with the message on the Doctor’s psychic paper indicating somebody the Doctor potentially knows (or in actuality will know).  Opening with the pre-titles sequence means the emptiness highlighted by Euros Lyn’s direction feels slightly less empty, although intrigue is there.  The episode may have actually had a stronger opening without the usual pre-titles sequence and just saved the little girl’s first appearance to the moment the Doctor and Donna briefly see her.  Outside of this, the sequences with the Doctor and Donna just exploring before the lights go out are some of the most atmospheric moments in Doctor Who history.  David Tennant and Catherine Tate play the mystery well and the real danger comes just from lights going out which is already a creepy image.  The addition of the Nodes is this fascinating little science fiction idea that seems normal, people already donate their organs and bodies to science, so why not their faces as well as part of robots, but they’re shot right in the uncanny valley with these human but inhuman voices.

 

Once the episode really gets going with the addition of the archeological team led by Professor River Song, played by Alex Kingston, Moffat gets the chance to really ramp up the horror.  The rate at which information is revealed about the library through this first episode is incredibly well done.  The archeologists have been spending time breaking through the Library’s defenses and this is the first time since it went dark and thousands of people vanished a century ago.  The timing from the other characters’ arrival and the first death.  Miss Evangelista, a member of the crew essentially there in a secretarial role played by Talulah Riley, has her flesh stripped in seconds, the audience hears her scream and we (along with the characters) find her skeleton just sitting in a room as the neural computer in her suit gives her a few final moments of life.  This happens a considerable way through the episode, giving the story a slower pace that really works to build the atmosphere and tension.  Steve Pemberton as the financer of the expedition, Lux, gives this wonderfully stubborn performance as his attempts to bring the Doctor and Donna under his control, giving them contracts which they promptly rip in half and refuse to sign, while not listening when the Doctor pleads for the team to leave before the bodies truly begin to pile up.

 

The shadows killing people here are the Vashta Nerada, microscopic scavengers that shouldn’t be this aggressive, but something has them becoming active predators.  Moffat’s script is excellent at giving enough information to understand the concept but also elevates these creatures into a thing that nobody can reason with.  While there is one monologue from the Doctor about alien weaknesses that ends with this brilliant point that for Vashta Nerada you can only run, run and hope, they don’t have an actual visual form.  They eventually reanimate the skeletons so there are astronaut suit skeletons filling the proper monster quota for the story, but not knowing adds to the almost cosmic horror.  These are creatures that are just eating and expanding, not actively being malicious, and there’s no way out.  The climax and cliffhanger of the episode in particular are perfectly shown as frantic as the Doctor attempts to teleport Donna to the TARDIS for her own safety while he is going to go to the center of the Library with the team, but something goes wrong.  Donna Noble has left the Library, Donna Noble has been saved.  The message is how the dead from a century prior are described while a reanimated Proper Dave, played in life by Harry Peacock who is apparently a famous comedic actor in the UK that I am unaware of, has them trapped by a locked, wooden door.  It’s an amazing ending to an amazing episode.  9/10.

 

“Forest of the Dead” is one of the few times where the second episode of a two-part story is just as good as the first episode.  While it maintains the horror tone, it also goes into a surrealist sequence as it expands on Dr. Moon and the little girl, as it opens with Donna waking up in an institution with Dr. Moon as her doctor, a montage showing her recovering and falling in love with a man called Lee, getting married, and having children.  This is an equally horrific sequence as it develops through the episode, being shot both stark but with the pacing of a dream adding to the surrealist quality.  It is clear to the audience that Donna is just being put through the motions of the mentioned events, as soon as something is mentioned it immediately happens, and there are little hints that are eventually pointed out by a Miss Evangelista who was uploaded into the computer by the Library itself, though due to an error has become a monstrous veiled woman with far more intelligence.  When the illusion is ripped away from Donna, she can do nothing but despair and scream at the loss of her husband and children, even if their relationship was something that was never real.  As a sequence, integrated quite well into the episode, it’s there for essential character development for Donna despite not moving the plot forward.  Remove it and the information about the heart of the Library and the meltdown the little girl has because of the danger would still happen, as well as the explanation of Dr. Moon, but you’d also lose much of what makes Donna work as a character and what she is kind of looking for in her eventual future, something that is quite sad as this is the episode where her eventual fate is more blatantly foreshadowed.

 

Alex Kingston and David Tennant are the crux that “Forest of the Dead” rests on, Steven Moffat using “Silence in the Library” to set up the idea that River Song is someone the Doctor will know, but this second episode gives River her tragic fate and real relationship with the Doctor.  The big twist that wouldn’t be revealed until the end of the sixth series was already intended by Moffat when writing the character’s appearance here, and something that was guessed by fans through internet forums, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an interesting twist.  From the moment River tells the Doctor his own name, whispered in the ear and shot so the audience has no inkling as to what it is, the viewer knows exactly who she is and any tension between the characters, tension played wonderfully between Tennant and Kingston, dissolves.  The trust is there and it makes River’s sacrifice at the climax of the episode even more tragic because we know we will se her again, but like the Doctor we know she is going to die.  Yes, her fate to live on in the computer is the second example of Moffat being unable to kill characters, but since the last time he did that was 2005’s “The Doctor Dances” it hasn’t quite gotten stale yet.  The relationship and River Song as a character also is helped by being in a script edited by Russell T. Davies with his final pass, despite claims that Davies never made changes to Moffat scripts, the rejection of some of the ideas mentioned at the beginning of this review indicates that that wasn’t entirely true.  Alex Kingston as an actress is also wonderfully snarky in her performance, knowing when to hold back from the Doctor and when to be amazed, River’s realization at the climax is genuinely a heartbreaking sequence that adds to the sacrifice of the character.

 

The resolution of the episode is also fascinating in general.  The Vashta Nerada take both Other Dave and Anita (with whom the Doctor was developing a rapport) before being able to actually speak with the Doctor.  The reveal as to why the Vashta Nerada are on the Library adds this interesting environmentalist slant to the story, the building of a planet sized library means a planet’s worth of trees would be used for the books, and it is made explicit that these books are made from pulping trees into paper and binding them into books.  The Vashta Nerada are creatures that spore in forests and the Library has become their forest.  They are a species that deserve to be protected in the Library, the story itself coming from one big misunderstanding and human error, reflective of much of the damage the human race has done on Earth, the ordinary people unable to stop things.  This is revealed in tandem with the fact that the little girl is actually a relative of Lux, a dying little girl wired into the core of the Library to give her an immortal life.  Sadly, Moffat doesn’t do much to examine this fate for Charlotte Lux, it’s a fate that kind of brings to mind “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” on one level but doesn’t quite since she isn’t in pain.  The fate is horrific since this is a child who has been given immortality and health but is consistently lonely with the Dr. Moon to guide her and a father figure that’s just known as Dad with no real life.  This goes unexamined by Moffat, instead giving River this same fate, though surrounded by those who have died in the Library as a way to circumvent their horrific deaths at the hands of the Vashta Nerada.  It means there is an ending  that in an attempt to have a happy bent actually feels horrific and cruel, something that will become commonplace during Moffat’s era proper.  9/10.

 

Overall, as a glimpse as what’s to come from Doctor Who when Steven Moffat takes over “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”, while suffering from individual issues, manages to be one of the high points thus far for the fourth series of Doctor Who.  David Tennant and Catherine Tate make great work of their respective plots, the guest cast is excellent, Euros Lyn’s direction is one of those epic directions aided by a quieter Murray Gold score, while Alex Kingston is the perfect actress for River Song, taking the material and truly making it her own.  The first episode suffers from a less than stellar integration of a B-plot while the second’s lack of examination of its ending slightly brings this story down to being near perfect.  9/10.

A Private Little War by: Gene Roddenberry from a story by: Jud Crucis and directed by: Marc Daniels

 

“A Private Little War” is written by Gene Roddenberry, from a story by: Jud Crucis, a pseudonym for Don Ingalls, and is directed by Marc Daniels.  It was filmed under production code 45, was the 19^th episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 48^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on February 2, 1968.

 

Sometimes there is an episode of Star Trek that just confuses you in terms of what it does and more importantly what it’s trying to do.  “A Private Little War” is an episode that certainly has the potential to be one of the greats, especially if the actual writing of the script wasn’t in the hands of show creator Gene Roddenberry.  Don Ingalls, who wrote the lackluster “The Alternative Factor” for the first season, had an interesting idea for an episode to parallel the Vietnam War and the United States’ involvement, President Lyndon B. Johnson being largely responsible for escalations of the United States in Vietnam since he assumed the office of the presidency in 1963.  “A Private Little War”, however, would not bear Ingalls name even in a story credit, Ingalls requesting a pseudonym on the script when his more explicit references and characters inspired by Ho Chi Minh were removed.  Now to give credit to the production, removing some of these references was probably the correct call, while the show has been good at casting non-white actors on many occasions, there are still the issues of yellowface in the Klingons and an often weak writing of non-white characters.

 

In the form that the episode eventually aired, “A Private Little War” has plenty of interesting ideas and moments that can prove there was something in Ingalls’ original idea, even if much of it was heavily altered.  The plot involves Kirk directly disobeying the Prime Directive due to Klingon interference, giving one village of on the planet Neural rifles and ammunition in retaliation to the Klingons doing the exact same thing.  The episode sets up these people as people Kirk had previous contact with over a decade prior, the episode building to this escalation which Kirk has to provide for these people.  This is where the episode ends, leaving the audience on what should be an incredibly powerful and dark image to end the story on.  For much of the episode, Kirk and McCoy are down on the planet after Spock is stranded in sickbay, he is shot in the first act of the episode.  In between Spock being shot and the action on the planet proper, the best sequence of the episode occurs, an extended scene establishing the theory that the Klingons are giving these people weapons and breaking treaties, allowing standout performances from Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig as Uhura, Chekov, and McCoy attempt to talk Kirk out of going down to the planet and risking contacting Starfleet before acting on his own.  Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel also gets a few scenes with the injured Spock while the episode introduces Dr. M'Benga, played by Booker Bradshaw, as a human doctor whose studied Vulcan physiology since McCoy is paired with Kirk for the rest of the episode.

 

The largest issues of the episode occur whenever we are on the planet.  First, there is an alien called a mugato which is this stark white gorilla with poison that feels like an over the top alien to attack and poison Kirk getting him and McCoy to the village.  It’s clearly a guy in a slightly altered gorilla suit when this is an episode where a subtler alien may have been more effective, since Kirk is poisoned perhaps a regular sized snake could have made for a more effective alien.  Luckily it isn’t in the episode often, the Klingon leader being enough of a threat despite also being more of a background threat.  What’s brought to the foreground is an evil temptress who saves Kirk from the venom using tribal magic.  Already setting up a society of villagers is slightly dicey territory considering the real world implications of an allegory for Vietnam, but Kirk being healed by tribal magic by Nona, played by Nancy Kovack, which puts him under her spell is incredibly problematic.  This character and plotline reeks of the influence of Gene Roddenberry.  Roddenberry as a writer is responsible for some incredibly sexist episodes, and some of the weaker episodes of the first season, despite creating the show.  “Charlie X” and “Mudd’s Women” both were story ideas from Roddenberry and it’s clear that with “A Private Little War” he’s added in this character and made her the A-plot of the episode.  It overlays this awful idea of a temptress being the reason this society goes to this war of escalation on a far more complex idea of outsiders interfering.   Kovack is doing her best with the material, despite her skin being visibly darkened to give this exotic look which adds another layer of discomfort due to again Roddenberry’s decisions in rewriting this script.  It also means the Klingon supplying the weapons to the other faction only can appear in two scenes when this conflict should be the main thrust of the episode.

 

Overall, “A Private Little War” is an episode that because of Gene Roddenberry is an incredibly mixed bag.  Ingalls has a great idea here and when his ideas are clearly elevated in scenes on the Enterprise and the final scenes, it’s great, but Roddenberry’s sexist writing tendencies and misunderstanding of Ingalls’ original ideas means this episode is dragged down incredibly despite the material clearly showing the true potential of the idea.  5/10.

Mistborn: The Lost Metal by: Brandon Sanderson

 

The second era of Mistborn had been Brandon Sanderson’s unintended quartet with the most delays on its final installment.  Shadows of Self, the second installment, was written after the third, The Bands of Mourning, while The Alloy of Law was only intended to start as a brief standalone but Sanderson being Sanderson it became a quartet.  It’s also a sequence that now that it is complete I am having some difficulty parsing my complete thoughts on the sequence.  While none of the installments were bad, they weren’t among Sanderson’s absolute best work and couldn’t seem to reach the heights of the initial trilogy.  The Lost Metal was initially announced soon after The Bands of Mourning but was delayed until a November 2022 release after both Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, plus the initial installments in the Skyward series being used to prepare for the third era of Mistborn which will bring the Cosmere as a whole into the Space Age.  In describing The Lost Metal, Sanderson mentioned taking the gloves off in terms of using this novel as a way to go through larger Cosmere connections which was something that generally made me a touch worried as bringing together a shared universe could entangle the Cosmere for potential new readers.

 

In terms of Cosmere connections, I must confess that while I have been doing a larger Cosmere reread through 2022/2023, when it comes to connections I am often quite bad at spotting them and always parsing out who they were.  It took me until this read of Words of Radiance to realize all of the Warbreaker connections (or at least the big ones that aren’t Nightblood), so when approaching The Lost Metal there was some worry that even these would take away from my enjoyment of the novel.  The novel is split into three parts, with the third being the longest of the three parts, and while reading the novel only took me about three days, this is one where Sanderson’s tendency to ramp things up as the story hurtles towards a climax might be Sanderson’s biggest yet.  The stakes, as was for much of the original Mistborn trilogy, are world ending, and Sanderson has thrown out much of the Western storytelling that defined The Alloy of Law (and held back the other two installments slightly) for a post-Western aesthetic.  The big climax involves a planted bomb that would destroy Elendel and the Cosmere in general being told about the opportunities to colonize Scadriel, plus the potential of creating atium in the destruction.  Marasi’s plot is where the proper connections are really to be made, as a police detective she becomes embroiled in the activities of the Ghostbloods who become allies to our protagonists meaning several references to specifically The Emperor’s Soul, Elantris, and probably The Stormlight Archives (outside of some cultural references there are a few cryptic plot elements that may be active characters from Roshar).  Marasi finally also feels like an elevated character here, in previous installments she just wasn’t quite working for me as well as she could have.  Luckily, while there are many, many more, they are details that say a Mistborn only reader will slip right by without largely impacting the story outside of the general climax and the larger Cosmere rules.

 

While the first part of the novel is actually quite slow, Sanderson having implemented a five year timeskip to account for the many delays, there’s time spent showing where our major players and Elendel as a city has grown since The Bands of Mourning.  Where The Lost Metal really succeeds is capping off these character arcs, Wayne in particular.  Wayne’s comedy has always been hit or miss for me, there are times when I find him quite charming and it’s clear there is depth, but Shadows of Self and The Bands of Mourning had some points where his humor has gotten older.  Sanderson really took the character to the next level here, beginning The Lost Metal with a clear indication that this is going to be an ending for Wayne.  He’s influenced Wax and Steris’ now five year old son, has become far more accomplished as trickster, and is ready to finally meet his grief head on with the acknowledgment that forgiveness is never coming for him.  Sanderson has also just dialed in the jokes to the right amount.  The same can be said about Steris whose neurodivergence just feels as if its given her a better place in the world, possibly due to how Sanderson has grown as a writer, her epilogue specifically calling out how there is a place in the world that was always there but due to subtle discrimination had to be carved for her to be seen as enough.  Her chapters are fascinating in particular as her relationship with Wax has grown.  Wax’s arc, while not weak, is more of a capstone, though he’s still a wonderful protagonist and seeing his place in politics is equally as interesting as Steris’ before the calamity hits in that third part.

 

Overall, The Lost Metal is honestly the book that makes the second era of Mistborn worth it among the rest of the Cosmere.  It’s a book where nothing feels trivial or a side step, Sanderson having the mission to show a preview of things to come from him and the Cosmere, while really giving the characters their best outing possible.  The plot itself is elevated by being quite a simple conspiracy with Western characters forced into an ordered world which is an interesting theme.  The usual religious elements that have been integral to Mistborn are also fascinating as there are several points where it is indicated the gods are wrong, or could be wrong.  It is one that you need Mistborn: Secret History to fully get though that is part of Mistborn already and the start isn’t quite there yet but the rest of the book has some of Sanderson’s greatest ideas so far.  9/10.

The Unicorn and the Wasp by: Gareth Roberts and directed by: Graeme Harper

 

“The Unicorn and the Wasp” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble with Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Christie, Felicity Kendal as Lady Eddison, Tom Goodman-Hill as Reverend Golightly, Christopher Benjamin as Colonel Hugh, Felicity Jones as Robina Redmond, and Adam Rayner as Roger Curbishley.  It was written by: Gareth Roberts and directed by: Graeme Harper with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Susie Liggat as Producer, and Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Phil Collinson as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 17 May 2008 on BBC One.

 

Gareth Roberts is an unapologetic transphobe and especially in times like these it is a mark on consuming any media written by Roberts.  His transphobic tweets, generally under a thin veneer of protecting women, are not up for debate.  Trans rights are human rights.

 

Three series included a celebrity historical making it now a tradition for Doctor Who’s revived series and after “The Shakespeare Code” proved a success, Phil Collinson suggested as far back as 2006 to do one featuring Agatha Christie.  Like “The Unquiet Dead” featuring Charles Dickens meeting ghosts at Christmas, Russell T. Davies assigned Gareth Roberts a story featuring Agatha Christie in the 1960s having to solve a murder that would eventually lead to an alien culprit responsible.  As the episode developed, Davies and Roberts agreed that the 1960s setting was not working, initially scaling it back to a filmed framing sequence with an older Christie at the beginning and end of the episode reminiscing about her vague memories of the episode.  The 1920s setting was chosen due to the real life Christie disappearing for eleven days, generally believed to be a plan to leave her husband who had been having an affair.  Further developments cut this framing sequence, the final scene being rewritten for the Doctor and Donna in the TARDIS to ruminate on Christie’s long lasting legacy as an author.  Davies also asked Roberts for the episode, despite being placed early in the series production order in the second production block with Graeme Harper as director and Susie Liggat as producer (Collinson would be an executive producer while focusing on securing location work for “The Fires of Pompeii”), to be written for a mid-series slot as a potential ratings boost.  Agatha Christie as an author is one of the best selling authors of all time, her books still being in circulation to this day and at least one or two are included in school reading curriculums.  As a result this would be the first episode filmed with Catherine Tate and her return, “Partners in Crime” being in the fourth block.

 

This fact shows just how well Catherine Tate is as an actress and her chemistry with David Tennant.  She slips right back into the role of Donna Noble, a role that has already undergone quite a lot of character development through the first half of the series which would have only been in script form at best when this episode was recorded.  There is a slight hiccup at the denouement for Donna, she constantly interjects and is played as dumb when it comes to who the murderer is, but outside of that Tate’s heart and sould as Donna shines through.  The supporting cast is also excellent, Fenella Woolgar is wonderful as Agatha Christie with this sharp mind but vulnerability due to the historic point of the episode being just before the disappearance.  Christopher Benjamin is a treat to see in a supporting role, a full year before Big Finish Productions would bring him back as Henry Gordon Jago, Felicity Jones as the titular Unicorn is also a wonderful little lower class part, and Felicity Kendal as the upper class Lady Eddison brings the right amount of British class to the proceedings.  “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, which is a great title, is propped up by great performances when the actual plot is sadly the weakest element.  Now, it’s not a bad idea to do a murder mystery with Agatha Christie and homage or even spoof her work, but it seems that Gareth Roberts doesn’t actually understand the work of Agatha Christie.  Much of Christie’s work is concerned with some aspect of the British class system, the killers are almost always upper class, and the tone is generally quite serious.

 

Rarely will you find a Christie story where the suspects are generally blame free for the actual murder, the reveal of the alien plot in the episode tries to add these dark secrets to people but they are generally on the periphery outside of the reveal of the Unicorn and the eventual reveal of the Wasp.  Roberts includes several references to Christie stories in the form of titles (or portmanteaus of titles) in dialogue, but you never get the sense that he’s read any of them.  There is a moment where Lady Edison reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is integral to why the alien Vespiform has a connection to Christie, it absorbs the plot of that book so it acts out a Christie murder mystery in this episode.  Except it’s actually acting out either deaths from books that the episode calls out have not been written yet, or murders that have more in common with the board game Clue.  The tone is far too similar too Clue than to any Christie.  It doesn’t make the episode a bad episode, just one with wasted potential.

 

Overall, “The Unicorn and the Wasp” is an episode that generally feels underdeveloped for the premise it is trying to execute properly.  The cast delivering some genuinely punchy and fun dialogue, as well as some great character moments if you ignore the thing the episode is meant to be homaging.  The episode is a romp which is often very fun, but also not an episode with much substance.  Sadly this means the episode becomes largely filler, the Vespiform and past of the creature being the most interesting part that’s sadly done in a single flashback.  6/10.

The Immunity Syndrome by: Robert Sabaroff and directed by: Joseph Pevney

 

“The Immunity Syndrome” is written by Robert Sabaroff and is directed by Joseph Pevney.  It was filmed under production code 48, was the 18^th episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 47^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on January 19, 1968.

 

There is something fascinating about the subtext of comrades in a desperate situation.  The Lord of the Rings includes a lot of subtext between the characters of Frodo and Sam going through hell and back, ramped up for the film adaptations from Peter Jackson of this intense relationship built on love.  “The Immunity Syndrome” is an episode of Star Trek that not without incident mimics this relationship and idea between two of the main characters.  Spock and McCoy are by designs opposite ends of a spectrum, Spock on the surface being cold and logical while McCoy is warm and emotional (in the framework of 1960s masculinity).  Their dynamic is generally at odds, usually joking at Spock’s heritage which of course can be read as xenophobic despite being played in episodes as friendly jokes.  “The Immunity Syndrome” goes a long way to examine why this double act is important and why, despite it all, these jokes should perhaps be taken as two men who deeply care about one another.  Robert Sabaroff’s only script for the original series of Star Trek, this is an episode confined to the Enterprise for the majority of the runtime due to an outside force that has destroyed a ship of 400 and potentially a galaxy.  It appears as a black spot on display screens and causes the crew of the Enterprise to become increasingly fatigued, only able to continue operation of the ship through extensive use of stimulants.  It is emotionless, eating and expanding, not caring.  It’s hypothesized to be an organism where life as we know it are an invading virus, the response is an immune system response.  This slightly gives it a knowable understanding, but the effects in particular make it feel particularly empty.  The black of the display screen is stark and terrifying.  The general background cast play their roles as if they are dying, and any mission may be futile.

 

The role Spock and McCoy play in this episode is one of two men who deeply care about and for one another who are at total odds with one another.  There is a general sense of both men wishing to do their duty so the other and the crew itself can live.  The shuttlecraft being sent out towards the creature with a probe that would send the necessary data to destroy the creature, reasoning with it is clearly not an option.  Kirk has to grapple with the decision on which of the two men to send, both having the knowledge to operate the shuttlecraft and analyze the creature.  Both make compelling arguments as to why it should be them that would sacrifice himself for the greater good.  It’s eventually Spock that is chosen, Leonard Nimoy’s stoic performance in the face of this grave danger one of the best he has given for the show.  There is this moment where Spock is in complete shock when Kirk and McCoy come to rescue him in the shuttlecraft, the creature on the path to being defeated with an antimatter bomb that hasn’t actually detonated yet.  DeForest Kelley equally gives a compelling performance that yes McCoy would go personally to save Spock.  What’s especially interesting is that Sabaroff’s script doesn’t include usual references that these characters would do this for any other crew member, it’s heavily implied they would just do it for each other or Kirk as captain, again a heavy bond between three men that you’d rarely see in network television in the 1960s.   The ending of the episode is also quite horrific, the implication is that this thing could still be out there somewhere and overtake humanity which is an incredibly nihilistic but brilliant ending to the episode.

 

Overall, while I certainly was not expecting the intense character drama in “The Immunity Syndrome”, it came as an incredibly welcome surprise and a great example of how a ship only Star Trek episode can work incredibly well.  While not perfect, as usual there are issues with the supporting cast generally not having much to do and the episode is slightly slow to start, it’s an excellent example of tone setting and exploring this type of relationship.  8.5/10.

The Doctor's Daughter by: Stephen Greenhorn and directed by: Alice Troughton

 

“The Doctor’s Daughter” stars David Tennant as the Doctor, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones with Georgia Moffett as Jenny, Nigel Terry as Cobb, Joe Dempsie as Cline, Paul Kasey as Hath Peck, and Ruari Mears as Hath Gable.  It was written by: Stephen Greenhorn and directed by: Alice Troughton with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 10 May 2008 on BBC One.

 

“The Doctor’s Daughter” came from Russell T. Davies, assigning the idea to Stephen Greenhorn in reaction to Greenhorn’s belief that the Doctor as a character is initially unchanging, this idea being designed to challenge that notion.  The idea of a genetic offspring acting as the Doctor’s daughter was meant to show the Doctor faced with a child that is the polar opposite, programmed to be a soldier, further exploring ideas of the Doctor not working well with military groups as “The Sontaran Stratagem” and “The Poison Sky” would immediately precede it.  This also brought Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, for the episode.  Davies also suggested an underground war as the setting and alien communication through liquid before Greenhorn was given free reign to write the episode.  This is important to note as “The Doctor’s Daughter” develops itself to be the absolute worst episode of Russell T. Davies’ tenure on the show as well as one of the worst episodes overall, a majority of this being due to the weaknesses in the script which much of this review will focus on.  The episode was placed in the sixth production block under director Alice Troughton, and her direction is mostly serviceable.  There are a few sequences in particular that do not work, feeling as if the location work and sets were meant to be bigger so the characters could be blocked as further away from one another, the Doctor calling Donna and Jenny as if they are further away from him making a particularly awkward sequence.  The direction of the debris crash that separates the Doctor and Donna from Martha in the first act of the episode is also a particularly bad looking sequence, the editing going through rapid cuts in an attempt to salvage the footage.  It’s a shame because Troughton is clearly a director with vision and flair, this is just an episode where her talents are underutilized and actively worked against.

 

In fan circles when you mention “The Doctor’s Daughter” one of the chief complaints is the moment after the fighting is over, the Doctor picks up a gun and declares to the human general Cobb that “I never would”.  This is generally interpreted to mean the Doctor never would shoot a gun to kill a person, in line with the anti-war and pro-pacifist theme of the episode, the clear idea being that since the Time War, the Doctor is above weapons and violence.  This is of course, hypocritical and generally out of character for the Doctor who just the previous episode made a bomb to blow up the Sontarans.  It’s an aspect of the episode that does not work, but it is hardly the weakest aspect of the episode.  David Tennant’s performance as the Doctor is over the top, showing utter disdain for Jenny and the general situation of an interspecies war.  The Doctor is particularly out of character, even if you assume Gallifrey has a human like sexual structure, mainly because Greenhorn makes the Doctor both a victim of metaphorical assault, demonizes him for it, and goes down the route of eugenics for the Doctor as he continuously believes Jenny to be impure.  The latter point is partially proven wrong as the Doctor just accepts Jenny when she shows that she doesn’t necessarily have to kill her enemies (which I will come back to), but it then undercuts this by not making her a full Time Lord character, she dies and has a delayed resurrection/renewal/regeneration.  The Doctor being demonized for not immediately accepting Jenny is also given almost entirely to Donna, being her primary goal and a performance from Catherine Tate that feels unusually stilted plus out of character.  The Doctor’s genetic material was harvested and made into Jenny without his consent, connect the dots there for what that represents.

 

Jenny as a character, despite the general chemistry between Georgia Moffett and David Tennant, is incredibly underdeveloped.  She is programmed to be a soldier and doesn’t really have her own agency, though is immediately kicked out of the army for being from pacifist stock, though that only lasts until the plot needs her to have a dilemma.  The script doesn’t actually clarify if the genetics for war itself mean she is influenced to be a soldier or if the general knowledge of war and being a soldier is programmed in which means the audience can’t really connect with the stakes of her character’s choices throughout the episode.  The war itself is also revealed to have only been seven days long, which is an attempt from Greenhorn to really show the devastation and destruction of war, but the episode doesn’t do enough to show it.  We see exactly one battle, poorly choreographed at the beginning, and that’s it.  Martha is trapped with the opposite side, the walking fish/human Hath and while Agyeman is doing her best with the material, her scenes genuinely feel like filler making it such a shame that she is no longer part of the TARDIS team.  There is exactly one scene of Martha being a Doctor which is nice, but other than that she’s there because the episode needs something to cut away to when not on the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny.

 

Overall, “The Doctor’s Daughter” is an episode that includes a message that genuinely makes my stomach turn.  While it clearly wants to show the horrors of war, it doesn’t actually do that and has a scenario where society has broken down because of the smallest of power vacuums with no system in place for what happens when the leader is gone.  It’s an episode where the Doctor is either massively out of character in terms of acceptance of violence or being actively demonized for not connecting with the offspring that was forced upon him (even a joke being made about how child support would still be owed even if he didn’t want her).  Filled with many of the worst moments and reflective of some of Davies’ issues in his viewing of Doctor Who which would be fine if Davies was the writer and not a writer like Stephen Greenhorn who makes them worse by adding his own, even worse ideas on top of it.  1/10.

The Sontaran Stratagem & The Poison Sky by: Helen Raynor and directed by: Douglas Mackinnon

 

“The Sontaran Stratagem” and “The Poison Sky” stars David Tennant as the Doctor, Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones with Rupert Holliday-Evans as Colonel Mace, Christian Cooke as Ross Jenkins, Jacqueline King as Sylvia Noble, Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott, Ryan Sampson as Luke Rattigan, Christopher Ryan as General Staal, and Dan Starkey as Commander Skorr.  They were written by: Helen Raynor and directed by: Douglas Mackinnon with Nikki Smith as Script Editor, Susie Liggat as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  They were originally broadcast on Saturdays 26 April to 3 May 2008 on BBC One.

 

The Sontarans as Doctor Who aliens are a joke in several ways.  Throughout their appearances in the classic series they became more ineffective as villains with costumes that almost immediately stray away from their roots as nasty, brutish, and short, with The Invasion of Time, A Fix with Sontarans, and The Two Doctors portraying them as especially a joke.  This is something the revival would eventually run with under Steven Moffat, writing them as outwardly incompetent for comedic effect in episodes such as “The Time of the Doctor” and “A Good Man Goes to War”.  Only their initial appearances in The Time Warrior and The Sontaran Experiment had attempted to keep them a joke, but a joke of a very different sort.  Robert Holmes created the Sontarans as a comment on war and imperialism, both its futility and the extreme harm of the single-mindedness that leads to the fall of empires.  They are a species locked in an eternal stalemate with the Rutans and this is something Russell T. Davies wished to keep when reviving them for the fourth series of his Doctor Who revival, allocating their appearance to be the series’ first two-part story once again in the hands of ex-script editor and writer Helen Raynor, with the additional request for a return from Martha Jones, UNIT, and a story involving some sort of pollution solution being false.  The two-part production was assigned to new director Douglas Mackinnon who would go on to be a prolific director of both Doctor Who and British television in general as the fifth production block of nine for this series.  While episode production is often allocated approximately a month per episode, this two-parter was filmed efficiently between location and studio footage over the course of five weeks, with insert footage added less than a month before broadcast of Billie Piper as Rose Tyler (essentially a repeat of a clip shot for a later episode).

 

“The Sontaran Stratagem” as an episode, despite the large issues with Raynor’s previous efforts in “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks”, is quite enjoyable.  The plan of the Sontarans here have allied themselves with young genius Luke Rattigan, played by Ryan Sampson, to develop a GPS and green energy system, ATMOS, for a brighter tomorrow.  Rattigan as a character is a foil to the Sontarans, too intelligent for his own good, essentially Elon Musk but less fascist to create a product that somebody else actually developed with impossible plans revealed in the second episode “The Poison Sky”.  Sampson plays Rattigan as a queer-coded sniveling pansy archetype with delusions of war (and some potentially harmful ASD coding as well), but as a villain Raynor’s script in this first episode excels at making him a foil for the Sontaran characters.  Christopher Ryan and Dan Starkey play our main Sontarans as General Staal and Commander Skorr, respectively, Raynor continuing the Sontaran naming trend of s-names.  “The Sontaran Stratagem” actually excels at putting the Sontarans front and center for much of the episode, appearing in full with a reveal of under their helmets at about halfway through the episode, quite soon after the Doctor can investigate Rattigan’s academy for geniuses.  Much is made about the Sontarans as warriors who must always face their enemy and Raynor has added a militaristic chant to their culture for victory, something that goes a long way to extend Robert Holmes’ original militaristic metaphor from The Time Warrior.  What doesn’t quite work in this first episode about this plan is that much of the episode plays investigating ATMOS and the academy before the halfway point as something that the audience should be along with the Doctor as sinister but not alien, while the pre-credits sequence shows the death of a journalist when the ATMOS in her vehicle is taken over all before cutting to the TARDIS for a second pre-credits sequence.  Only the second sequence was needed, as it establishes the Doctor and Donna happily traveling and being called to Earth by Martha Jones which is perfectly intriguing to the audience which genuinely would want to see Freema Agyeman back as Martha.

 

The interplay between the Doctor, Donna, and Martha is wonderful, gone is the catty relationship of romantic rivals in “School Reunion” as Raynor plays Donna and Martha becoming fast friends.  Assisted by the amazing chemistry between Tennant, Tate, and Agyeman, the audience also gets this sense that this TARDIS team genuinely would be a winner.  Included in the episode is UNIT as an organization, represented by Colonel Mace, played by Rupert Holliday-Evans, who is a nice addition, but the interplay between the Doctor and UNIT doesn’t actually work as well as Raynor seems to think it is.  The Doctor takes a completely pacifist route to operations, only begrudgingly working with UNIT in this episode despite the ATMOS factory under investigation being a situation tailor made for UNIT.  This is also commentary on the Doctor making Martha a soldier due to the trauma of “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords”, which doesn’t work because Martha is an army doctor, not a soldier.  The episode tries to frame her as the latter without actually doing such, something made worse in the second episode where her character is largely sidelined as she is cloned by the Sontarans as part of their plan.  The cloning aspect is actually a stroke of genius overall, even if using Martha as the cloned victim stops her from really being in the second episode: the Sontarans are a species of clones and this is the first time the production could actually portray this with special effects (though I personally prefer the black armor on the Sontarans, the blue just doesn’t look right and I can’t really place why).  What does work, however, is the reflection on family, Donna being convinced to go home for a visit allowing some wonderful performances from Jacqueline King and Bernard Cribbins as Sylvia and Wilfred, leading to the cliffhanger and their interactions with the Doctor working wonderfully.  It’s a way the cliffhanger can have stakes as Wilfred is the one in danger as well as the rest of the world, adding a personal connection to our characters and the audience.  “The Sontaran Stratagem” is also just quite a good piece of setup for a story.  7/10.

 

“The Poison Sky” is where things fall apart and don’t quite work as well as the episode would have them hope.  It’s an episode where the plot feels scraped too thin for a second forty-five minute episode, as the cliffhanger is the Sontaran plan going into motion but the plan sets up.  Helen Raynor’s script splits the TARDIS team in three ways: Martha in the clone bath, Donna on the TARDIS, and the Doctor with UNIT, and the largest issue here is that these plots don’t ever quite gel in terms of focus.  The story is a race against the clock as the ATMOS are activated as terraforming devices so the Sontarans can use the Earth for a new cloning planet, as well as some interesting baggage of the Sontarans, alien soldiers, being annoyed at not being allowed to fight in the Last Great Time War, though like the best aspects of the Time War it is left unexplained and off-screen overall.  While the Sontarans do invade the factory for a sequence where UNIT foolishly sends in soldiers to their deaths (including Private Ross Jenkins who had been bonding with the Doctor throughout the serial), they actually just stay in their ships throughout the episode.  This is subtly used to add to the general commentary of the Sontarans as war leading to mindless death and the one-track mind of war being the only goal.

 

The Sontarans aren’t actually all that effective at war because they all attempt to be generals, sitting back while watching the world burn, but being destroyed by a simple press of a button.  Now, Raynor fails slightly on the simple solution to the episode, attempting to build it up as a solution where the Doctor cannot win and Rattigan has to make a last minute “heroic” sacrifice tot blow the Sontarans sky high, throwing their catchphrase against them.  One of the large issues with this is that Rattigan doesn’t get enough time to be developed as a complex human villain, he's still a sniveling nerd.  There is exactly one scene of him revealing his plan to take his brilliant students away to another planet (which he then finds from the Sontarans was a lie) which they turn on him.  The issue is that we don’t actually see the student characters outside of this single scene or Rattigan outside of the Sontarans to build up who he is as a human.  Sampson’s performance is also just too over the top that it doesn’t quite work in this second half in particular, the breakdown being almost laughable.  The Sontarans are somehow more reserved than Rattigan which doesn’t feel as if it’s meant to be seen as this over the top.  It’s also just an episode that takes far too long to get to the obvious conclusion of Donna sneaking onto the Sontaran ship (a very tense and well directed sequence, the best of the episode due to Catherine Tate), the Martha clone realizing who she is a clone of and discovering morality (an interesting performance from an underused Freema Agyeman), and the Doctor teleporting to the ship to reverse the poisonous gas emanating from the ATMOS vehicles so the day is saved.  There’s also a slight misuse of mentioning Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart but not bringing in Nicholas Courtney for a brief cameo, which is partially what’s holding back the UNIT/military commentary as the Doctor is distasteful.  The Brigadier (or another pre-established UNIT character) needed to be here to make the more militarized UNIT feel more authentic.  “The Poison Sky” just feels like an episode that could have surpassed “The Sontaran Stratagem” if there weren’t integral pieces missing.  4/10.

 

Overall, “The Sontaran Stratagem” and “The Poison Sky” are certainly an improvement from Helen Raynor, though they are also the last two episodes she would write for the series, most likely forever due to her transphobic beliefs.  The first half is quite strong with character development and an interesting extrapolation of Robert Holmes’ original vision for the Sontarans, but the second half doesn’t take enough time to develop any of its threads making it feel underdeveloped.  The use of UNIT could be interesting, and the return of Martha Jones is the highlight as the three person TARDIS team works incredibly well for this two part story, but some of the elements are missing or buried too deep to be interesting.  David Tennant as the Doctor is also portrayed as close to his most pacifist self, something that will come to a head in the next episode to the weakest results for this fourth series, but the seeds are here and they make the Doctor’s character feel out of character without another human presence that knew UNIT before the modern day as Raynor’s scripts imply a change has taken place.  Douglas Mackinnon’s direction is also excellent, even on a limited schedule.  5.5/10.