WRITER: Stephen Greenhorn DIRECTOR: Richard Clark
CAST: David Tennant (The Doctor), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Tish Jones), Reggie Yates (Leo Jones), Adjoa Andoh (Francine Jones), Mark Gatiss (Professor Richard Lazarus), Thelma Barlow (Lady Thaw), Lucy O'Connell (Party Guest) & Bertie Carvel (Mysterious Man)
Martha arrives back home, only to find that her sister Tish is working for Professor Lazarus, a man who appears to have obtained immortality...After the entertaining, yet ultimately underwhelming Dalek two-parter, the adventure continues courtesy of writer Stephen Clark (creator of Scottish soap River City) with The Lazarus Experiment.
Mark Gatiss, one quarter of The League Of Gentlemen comedy troupe and a writer for Doctor Who, stars as the eponymous Lazarus, a 76-year-old genius who invents a machine that appears to be the fountain of youth. During his launch party one evening, Lazarus gives a demonstration of his system and accidentally unleashes a monster within...
The Lazarus Experiment is pure and simple stuff from writer Greenhorn, not particularly concerned with giving audiences anything more than an honest and straight-forward story. The entire episode is just an elongated chase with a CGI monster (a skeletal scorpion with a human face), although it was nice to see Martha's family given some development.
Unlike Rose's family, Martha's clan seem to be more interesting already. It's particularly nice to see sister Tish (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and brother Leo (Reggie Yates) avoiding the "annoying hanger-on" trap that ruined Noel Clark's Mickey in series 1 and 2. But it was even better to find that Martha's mother Franchine (the excellent Adjoa Andoh) is opposed to her daughter's relationship with The Doctor, a neat juxtaposition to Jackie Tyler's flummoxed approval, especially considering how dangerous being a companion to The Doctor clearly is!
Without the layering of series 3 mythology this episode would be a competent but ultimately hollow experience. This is by-the-numbers stuff that doesn't offer any surprises with its main plot. Of greater interest is more mention of Mr Saxon, who appears to be a paymaster to Lazarus Labs, so it can't be coincidence that their company logo (of multiple circles) looks like Gallifreyan writing... can it?
I'm also continually frustrated these days by how The Doctor's all-purpose sonic screwdriver can be manipulated to do anything each week-- here it helps with a system overload, restructures D.N.A over sound waves and locates a monster! It's just lazy writing and the skrewdriver is being used as a writer's crutch. I'd hate to see how The Doctor saves the universe should it ever get broken!
Overall, The Lazarus Experiment is perfectly entertaining fluff with a nice performance from Mark Gatiss, some impressive visuals and a finale that just about eradicate your memory of how shallow everything else has been. This is good honest fun for kids, interesting for fans with its nudges of mythology, but hardly essential viewing.
