Writer: Helen Raynor
Director: Douglas MackinnonCast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), Christopher Ryan (General Staal), Rupert Holliday Evans (Colonel Mace), Dan Starkey (Commander Skorr), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Ryan Sampson (Luke Rattigan), Clive Standen (Prvt. Harris), Wesley Theobald (Prvt. Gray), Christian Cooke (Ross Jenkins), Meryl Fernandes (Female Student), Leeshon Alexander (Male Student), Bridget Hodson (Captain Price), Kirsty Wark (Herself) & Lachele Carl (US Newsreader)
With Earth's skies poisoned, The Doctor tries to defeat the Sontarans, as Martha's clone manipulates UNIT and Donna is transported to the Sontaran spaceship..."This isn't war! This is sport!"
-- Commander Skorr (Dan Starkey)
As second parts go, The Poison Sky made for an effective climax to last week's set-up, although it failed to make the subplot with Luke Rattigan (Ryan Sampson) develop into much. As an egotistical American child prodigy, his role in helping the Sontarans implement ATMOS in the world's cars was fine, but this episode's attempt to give him a megalomaniacal agenda of his own (to repopulate Earth with his Academy's students after "planetfall"?) just didn’t work.
Fortunately, everything else about Helen Raynor's script worked well, with some crowd-pleasing moments and a good sense of mounting jeopardy. Following on from The Sontaran Stratagem, the skies above Earth have been poisoned -- although death only occurs in people when the atmosphere reaches 80% toxicity. Quite a flaw for genius Rattigan to have made, but necessary to give The Doctor a fighting chance to revert the damage, of course!
Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) has been cloned, and "Martha Clones" now works undercover as the Sontaran's "operative", curiously deactivating the world's nuclear arsenal – despite the fact even The Doctor (David Tennant) knows the planet's nukes wouldn't dent the Sontaran ship! So quite why she bothers doing any of this was very unclear, rendering Martha Clones' role wholly unnecessary.
Donna (Catherine Tate) returns to help The Doctor after her Gramps (Bernard Cribbins) is saved from inside his poisoned car by her mother Sylvia (Jacqueline King) smashing the windscreen with an axe. Unfortunately, The Doctor seems to be treating Donna with kid gloves (unlike Rose and Martha), and orders her to hideout in the TARDIS where the gas can't reach. Soon after, Sontaran-controlled UNIT soldiers attach beacons to the TARDIS and General Staal (Christopher Ryan) is able to teleport the TARDIS aboard his ship – relishing the capture of a Time Lord's vessel.
The Doctor tries to prevent UNIT engaging the Sontarans in battle, even after they arrive at the ATMOS factory with Commander Skorr (Dan Starkey), as they can neutralize conventional weapons. Using a phone with a connection to the TARDIS, he also has to talk Donna through disengaging the teleportation field so he can rescue her and retrieve his TARDIS, while working out a way to clear the skies of the ATMOS poison. Phew!
Despite some niggling problems (episodes are rarely cast-iron), The Poison Sky generally provides the thrills and spills you expect, and it's always a pleasure whenever a story has The Doctor at the centre of the action. He's been quite passive this season (particularly in Partners In Crime and Planet Of The Ood), so seeing him in the thick of things, plausibly thwarting the Sontaran plan is great fun. It was also nice to see his moral side come out, as he amusingly grumbles about guns again, and eventually decides on a suicide mission purely because it would give the Sontarans a choice in their fate. How selfless is that? I know he has regenerations, but still.
In fact, the emphasis on The Doctor pushes both companions even further into the background. The real Martha is absent until her inevitable rescue, the evil "Martha Clones" doesn't have much baring on events, and Donna's role is once again relatively minor. Catherine Tate is getting more agreeable as the weeks pass by, but does every episode have to involve her crying? It's getting a bit tiresome. Still, her reactions to events are being written more realistically (loved how nervous and scared she was in the TARDIS aboard the Sontaran ship) and she's offering audiences something different with The Doctor/companion dynamic.
And I must say that Donna's Gramps is already my favourite companion family member; someone with a twinkle in his eye who wants his granddaughter to grab life's opportunities. Unlike Donna's grumbling mother, nicely placed by Jacqueline King. Rupert Holliday Evans didn't have much to do in part 2 as Colonel Mace, but Christopher Ryan was once again very memorable as General Staal. It was just a pity his character remained stuck on his spaceship and only got one brief scene with The Doctor. A missed opportunity for such a great character, blessed with the perfect voice for cartoon villainy.
Overall, The Poison Sky marked the end of a two-part adventure that was very enjoyable, with enough incident and amusements to keep you glued. It didn't fit together as snugly as it could have (with Rattigan quite pointless, Martha wasted in part 2, and Donna underused throughout), but it was still far from boring and the sweep of the story pushed things along nicely.
Most impressively, it was a strong revival for the Sontarans, had some great writing for Tennant's hyperactive Doctor, contained several exciting moments, and a few welcome in-jokes for old fans to grin at. I particularly liked the nod at the Brigadier's existence ("stranded in Peru"), The Doctor wearing a gas-mask and quoting "are you my mummy?" (see The Empty Child), the return of the Valiant airborne aircraft carrier (see Last Of The Time Lords) and a subliminal flash of Rose Tyler on the TARDIS view-screen. How curious...
3 May 2008
BBC1, 6.20 pm
