TV Shows Dr Who: Waters of Mars

I thought it was a bit "meh", to be honest.

Spoiler

Dr. Who goes to Mars for no adequately explained reason, decides wisely to save his own skin but then he goes a bit mad, saves a few people who are decidedly ugrateful, and then asks Ood Sigma if it's the end of the series yet.

I find that with a lot of the RTD episodes. The Stephen Moffat ones however (Blink jumps out as a shining example), are a whole other kettle of fish.

 

CAUTION: SPOILERS COULD BE INFERRED

It was OK, the makeup/special effects on the faces were good, but the thing did play out a bit in horrible clichés;

1. Mother in imminent death scene reverts to watching video of children before dying.
2. Large lumps of plot (mysterious force frozen in the ice and mistakenly awakened, can affect anybody without other characters' knowledge) stolen from The Thing.
3. Cosmonaut has comedy accent and no-nonsense approach to technology.

Also it wasn't until the amazingly predictable ending (sorry, spoiler covers are beyond me so I won't spell it out) that I noticed the episode had ended without any real explanation as to what the hell the v-word was, where it came from and what it's past connection to Mars was. Or how water-based life forms don't freeze in the chill of Martian shade while skulking about on rooftops. Or how the survivors were going to explain getting back to Earth. I still like Tennant, though. Something to do with the way he pulled off the space-suit-actually-an-ill-fitting-fetish-item-replete-with-horrible-motorbike-helmet thing.

 

The Doctor aluded that they where probably connected to the Ice Warriors - either contained in the glacier by them, or the reason why they left Mars. That's why the Doctor spoke to the creature that had taken over the woman in confinement in High Martian.

The buildings where in another dome - I'm guessing the dome is aired up and has sufficient life support to allow humans up there, so the water creatures would be fine.

Dunno on that one.... And I'm sure a lot of questions would need to be asked about the fact that the Mars base had been nuked, yet the base commander is found dead with gunshot wounds in her London home.

 

I really enjoyed it although there were some plot holes.

not sure about that, I think I heard one of the girls ask how they were breathing on the roof and it was sort of brushed off as "they're breathing water"

One for the conspiracy theorists I'd imagine - "they never went to mars".

 

That's exactly what they said; "The ducts are unpressurised, how do they survive etc." Of all the things to bugger up, this is the one I'd fire the scriptwriter for. Let's consider:

1. They're outside, on a planet without an atmosphere, at night.
2. It's going to be damn cold. We're talking hundreds of degrees below zero.
3. Water freezes at 0 degrees centigrade, or thereabouts.
4. We know they aren't made of magic water or anything; after all, they were essentially extracted from ice.
5. Why don't they freeze? This is stupid.

I mean, suspension of disbelief for Time Lord, Tardis geometry etc but come on. Physics is physics; the Doctor may use bits of it we don't know about yet but this is just silly.

I got the talking bit, I just didn't understand the connection between them and Martians, except the possibility that the Martians had frozen the buggers some aeons beforehand.

As ever the advice seems to be the same as for all foreign places, be they Mars or Mexico - don't drink the water!

 

It was acceptable as a regular episode, but there was nothing special-worthy about it. The best bit for me was the preview of the next one. There are curious things happening there, including the return of

Spoiler

Donna Noble

. "Brilliant!"

Above spoiler tags for those who haven't seen it yet

Spoiler

, and to surprise anyone who expected The Master. I liked Donna.

.

 

- Mars does have an atmosphere, it's just not like the one on Earth. However, they did brush it away by inferring that the creatures breathe water.
- To be fair it couldn't really ever get to be hundreds of degrees below zero - absolute zero is at -273,15C. Surface temperatures on Mars varies from -87C to a recorded maximum of -5C
- Depending on pressure, this is correct.
- Yes.
- They didn't give a clear cut answer to this, but I remember one of the characters saying something about them being heated from some sort of internal fission whatever that means. Also I think it is safe to infer that inside the dome it's not going to be equal to Mars surface conditions. The human installations inevitably will bleed off some heat into the outer dome, and hence we can assume that at least within the dome the temperature is higher than that outside the dome.

That is good advice, but if you do have to drink the water, then make sure you boil it and purify it first.

 

Crap episode, as was the last one.

Where does it come from that 4 knocks = doctors death?

 

You obviously weren't paying attention during Planet of the Dead. One of the passengers on the bus told him about the four knocks:



She also re-affirms what the Ood told him about his song ending soon. Hence the vision of Ood Sigma.

 

Arrh right, the bus one was good, the other crap one I was thinking of was the episode; The Next Doctor.


There's also an episode called Time Crash http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/episodes/S0_03

I've never seen that

 

Time Crash was a previous "Children in Need" special, lasting about 5 minutes.
Set seconds before "Voyage of the Damned" (the Kylie Minogue Xmas special), it can be found as a DVD extra on that episode.

There is another one on Friday's telethon, once again acting as an intro/teaser for the Xmas special.

Also, "Dreamland", a 6-part animated story set in the 1950's Nevada desert, featuring David Tennant, Georgia Moffat, & David Warner, begins Saturday on the red button & BBC website.

 

I forgot to say I really struggled to hear anything that was being said around 10-15 minutes before the end, while they were collecting the supplies, the Doctor leaving and then coming back and giving orders. I'm not normally one to complain about the music drowning out the words and usually laugh at those who complain, but I found it ridiculous. At first I thought it was atmospheric, that you weren't supposed to hear them, then they started having seemingly proper conversations which I still couldn't properly make out.

 

Pants story, but I thought the ending was pretty brilliant... David Tennant is a fantastic actor and he'll be missed.

The new guy has some serious shoes to fill.