The Doctor's Daughter

Dear Gary—

The Doctor’s Daughter—kind of stupid, kind of fun. Two parts each. I’ll put this in the camp column, the same camp as, say, Terminus. It is immensely entertaining, despite some glaring faults. And the entertainment is not from trying too hard and not from throwing money at special effects. It is just unabashedly daft.

“I don’t know where we’re going, but my old hand’s very excited about it.” That just about says it all.

Along for the ride is Martha, hijacked by the TARDIS before she could make her escape from The Poison Sky. It is a bit of a waste since she is immediately separated from the Doctor and Donna, but she does get a nice storyline of her own with the Hath. The Hath are an unexplained new alien race on an unexplored new planet for Doctor Who; another waste. But as a waste, Martha and the Hath and the surface of this alien planet (hooray for that!) combine for a diverting side show.

“You can stay down here and live your whole life in the shadows, or come with me and stand in the open air.” Martha is not going to stay down in those confining tunnels where the bulk of the plot is unfolding. She is venturing out to feel the wind on her face. It seems a brutal punishment that her new found friend Peck is killed as a result. It is a short-lived kinship, but Martha manages to imbue heart and soul into this secondary narrative. And she gets to show off some doctoring skills along the way; I don’t know of too many MDs who could fix a fish man’s dislocated shoulder.

However the real story remains behind in those shadowy tunnels with the Doctor and Donna and, by the way, the Doctor’s daughter. Technically speaking she is not really his daughter but rather a product of progenation, grown from a tissue sample; a “generated anomaly” born fully clothed and mascaraed and pony tailed and ready to fight. For a soldier, though, she is awfully bouncy and joyous, must be the newborn thing.

The Doctor’s clone/daughter, or Jenny as Donna dubs her, is the reason for the story; and in a paradoxical way the reason the Doctor’s old hand is excited and the reason they have landed on Messaline. Jenny; the Doctor’s daughter; an excuse, a cop out, a disappointment. She is a plot device; a sexy come-on. The Last of the Time Lords has a daughter. He is not alone . . . oh no, wait, that was done already. The opening cloning sequence dispenses with all of the excited anticipation and what remains is forty plus minutes to fill.

The problem is there are only forty plus minutes to fill. They are amusing enough minutes but with just the bare bones of a plot; it is only enough to keep the action flowing and to provide a framework around which the daddy issues can be explored, but there isn’t much room for more. I’ll tackle the daddy issues first because that is really the only reason we are here.

“I’ve been a father before,” the Doctor tells Donna. The First Doctor traveled with his granddaughter Susan. New Who, however, is not conducive to this paternalistic nature; New Who is too busy depicting a Doctor who is young and hip and sexy with a dark side; there is no room for fatherly warmth in New Who. I am therefore glad that Jenny is more or less a false progeny and that the topic is covered superficially in this forty plus minutes of episode.

Donna gets things started with her “dad-shock” comments. “What’s she going to do, cramp your style?” she asks in a spot on assessment of what a true child would do for this New Doctor for a New Who. But since Jenny is not a true child the show takes this opportunity to explore that dark side of the Time Lord; that side that has suffered loss; that side that feels guilt; that side that knows danger and bloodshed and horror. Jenny represents a past that the Doctor doesn’t want to face, and so he denies her. “You’re an echo, that’s all.”

Again it is Donna right there by his side, providing the steady and guiding hand he needs. She won’t let him brush Jenny aside, and slowly the Doctor begins to open up to reveal the pain he has buried inside. “When I look at her now,” he tells Donna of Jenny, “I can see them (the Time Lords). The hole they left; all the pain that filled it. I just don’t know if I can face that every day.” Friend and counselor Donna assures him: “She’ll help you. We both will.” And when the Doctor persists in his doom and gloom mood Donna tells him, “I think you’re wrong.”

Jenny begins life as a rebellious teen, asserting her rights as an individual with a mind of her own and arguing with Dad. Then she reverts to little girl wanting to please Daddy. Donna takes on a big sister role towards Jenny in this make-shift family unit that is beginning to form, and the Doctor reluctantly starts to thaw. He even displays pride and joy as Jenny soaks up his pacifist teachings. It is not a relationship that will make it for the long haul, but it was never designed for that. (Given the turn things tend to take when young girls board the TARDIS in New Who, it’s for the best.) Jenny’s character is strictly an excuse to explore the Doctor’s hidden psyche.

Her death, therefore, is expected. I can’t say that the Doctor’s reaction to it is unexpected for New Who, just disappointing. The Doctor’s utter contempt for any hint of violence and weaponry has been on prominent display throughout the episode; the better to contrast with this sudden image of the Doctor as executioner—the Doctor, seething with rage, pointing his gun at the head of an unarmed and kneeling General Cobb. And “a man who never would” has to be the lamest tagline ever.

Now let me get to this threadbare plot with no room to expand. The Doctor, Donna, and Martha land in the middle of a war with a never ending supply of soldiers created by machine. Two sides, Hath and Human, are fighting it out over the Holy Grail, better known as The Source, even though they have no clue what it is. Countless generations have fought a war for which nobody knows the origins. And, oh yes, the battle has waged for all of seven days.

Much is made of the seven days reveal, yet it is meaningless. What difference does it make in the larger scheme of things? Seven days or seven years or seven million years. So what? And I have to wonder at the logic for this assumption. Donna has figured out the date stamping business on the construction of this underground complex; but the only thing that this proves is that the building process lasted seven days. Who is to say that is the same timeline as the war? They have the dates of the construction, but does anyone know what the date is at the present moment for a reference point? I don’t recall the Doctor checking the year before leaving the TARDIS. The Doctor does say that the machinery looks recent, but still, it could be several years that things have been going along. Why all the emphasis and fuss on the seven days? I suppose the show is trying to make some connection to the seven day creation story, but if so it has failed in its mission.

But OK, let’s say that it has been only seven days since war broke out and twenty generations of warriors have stepped out of the machines each of those seven days to fight and die. Are they such pathetic fighters that not one single soul from the original colonists survived for seven days? Or a couple from the first few days worth of generations? And if there are so many generations generated each day, why are there only a handful of people on hand? Where are these legions of armies? Do they make only one or two individuals at a time, wait for someone to die, and then make another? I also wonder about the Hath. Are they products of the machine too, or are the handful of Hath that are roaming about from the original colony, and if so, do they scratch their heads whenever they hear a human talking about the endless war of countless generations?

This is a story that could use multiple parts to do up the camp right.

Instead it is rushed and forced into a single forty-five minute format, but it still manages to have fun. That’s the only way to take this episode. Suspend disbelief, accept the “not impossible, just a bit unlikely” happenings, and go along for the ride. Don’t look at it too seriously. In that context the resurrection of Jenny can be tolerated.

It does make me long, however, for those good old days when Doctor Who was mature enough to handle a paternalistic Doctor. Maybe I’ll go now and put in The Sensorites.

Until next time, Gary . . .