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After the crazy, wonderful, "Fan-TASTIC!" roller coaster ride of Seasons 1 & 2, with their "Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways" and "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday" finale's, it was almost inevitable that Season 3 would not be able to maintain the sheer excellence of what had gone before. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Season 3 is bad, not by a very long shot! You'll have noticed, I hope, the 5 Star rating, but to my mind at least, Season 3 didn't quite reach the same dizzying heights of 1 & 2, and the reason why is, I think, obvious... Rose Tyler.
Her development, from London shop-girl, to time traveler, explorer of the universe, and killer of Daleks, helped drive the stories in a new more mature, more emotionally fulfilling direction, and let's not forget the heartbreaking finale on the beach in Norway! No, Seasons 1 & 2 became the story of Rose - and Mickey, and Pete, and Jackie! - much as Babylon 5, when looked at from the perspective of the entire 5 year series, was the interconnected story of Londo and G'Kar.
So, after all this bleating and whining about Rose, is Season 3 worth getting? If you've enjoyed the first two, the answer to that question is a definite and unequivocal "YES!!!" The new season gets off to a rollicking start with the now customary "Christmas Special" called, "The Runaway Bride." For me "Donna," the titular Bride, played by Catherine Tate, is the reason this episode works so well. Walking up the Isle on her Wedding Day, she's inexplicably transported to the Console Room of the TARDIS whilst it's in flight; alternately yelling accusations and questions at the Doctor while barely stopping to hear answers she can't possibly comprehend, she's loud, brash, and obnoxious. Basically, she's the "Anti-Rose!" Her withering retort to the Doctor of, "You're just making it up, that's not even a real word!" when told that "this" is the "TARDIS" is typical of her approach, as is her repeated reference to him as "Martian Boy!" The episode also features the return of the robotic Santa's from "The Christmas Invasion," this time in the service of a far more dangerous and malignant master, or should that be "Mistress?!"
The season proper gets off to a good start with the first official episode, "Smith and Jones," which introduces us to the Doctor's new Companion, "Martha Jones," a medical student who gets caught up in the hunt for a vampire-style alien that's taken refuge in the hospital where she works. Played by relative newcomer Freema Agyeman, Martha is Book-Smart AND Street-Smart; so, once again we have a companion who's almost the exact opposite of Rose, but without all the yelling and verbal abuse dished out by Donna! With the entire hospital somehow transported to the Moon and taken over by the Judoon, a kind of intergalactic police force - "Judoon on the Moon" the Doctor quips as their ships land in the distance - Martha more-or-less accepts the situation and works with the Doctor to find the "alien" before the Judoon find HIM. They may be cops and technologically advanced, but they're not very bright; they're looking for an alien and if they find the Doctor first, he'll be clapped in irons and hauled off to a cozy cell on one of those Judoon ships for transport to who-knows-where!
Needless to say after being returned to Earth after many a close call, Martha can't wait for another adventure, so the Doctor whisks her off to meet "The Bard" himself in "The Shakespeare Code," where there's the question of those pesky Witches to be dealt with! Again, another fun episode with a very contemporary "Man Of Letters" played by Dean Lennox Kelly, who greatly admires Martha's "fitted" attire; but oh dear, what did/will the Doctor do to upset Her Majesty?!?!?! LOL!
So, Season 3 gets off to a very strong start, but as a whole, this is probably the most uneven season so far. All the stories and concepts are wonderful as always, even if a few of them feel somewhat derivative, which is not a problem in and of itself, just look at Season 2's "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit" two-parter which gave us some great Alien-esque thrills!
For me, the most disappointing story of Season 3 was one I couldn't wait to see, "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks." The story concept is great, possibly one of the most ambitious to date, unfortunately the execution fell very short indeed. To save themselves we saw the "Cult of Skaro" perform an Emergency Temporal Shift when the Doctor opened the doorway between Earth and Parallel Earth at the end of Doomsday, for one last time. We then jump to 1930's New York and the construction of the Empire State Building, and who should be behind the project but everyone's favorite homicidal pepper-pots. There're some truly wonderful visuals in this story; there's something about the 30's Art Deco look and the new blinged-out Daleks that's just perfect, and the production team did a great job of invoking the look, feel, and sound, of Depression Era New York.
From an army of untold millions the Dalek race had been reduced to just four. Teetering on the brink of extinction they came up with a radical, some would say "sacrilegious," plan to not only save themselves, but to breed a new Dalek army. Working in secret they kidnapped the destitute, down-and-outs, the homeless, the unwanted, and fused human DNA with their own. These Dalek/Human hybrids are empty shells, waiting for the spark of life to be introduced, and it's here that the Empire State Building comes into play. The building is going to be the conductor for a massive blast of Gamma radiation emanating from the Sun as part of an enormous Solar Flare, waking the new Dalek army. But Dalek Sec, the leader of the Cult of Skaro, has an even more extreme plan in mind; "The Children of Skaro" he says, "must once more walk outside the Shell!" He plans to physically join with a Human host, thus creating a true Dalek/Human hybrid, and a creature that the others will surely view as an abomination!
Didn't I say this story was ambitious?!?!?! When Sec let the others know what he intended to do I almost had to change my underwear, I was THAT excited! LOL! But oh, the horror... when the hybrid - which I immediately dubbed "Hat-Sec!" - was revealed, I was suddenly transported back to the bad old days of rubber monsters, cardboard sets, and cheesy FX! And even though the rest of the story, and it's final resolution, was excitingly, even thrillingly told, poor old Hat-Sec sucked the life out of it for me!
But hey, it's not all-bad, remember that 5 Star rating! From here on in the stories really start to excel, "The Lazarus Experiment" is Who's take on The Fly, and also served to introduce us to Martha's less than perfect family. "42" is an excitingly told "countdown to disaster" type tale, with more Alien-type thrills, a touch of Danny Boyles Sunshine, and even a smidgen of Event Horizon thrown in for good measure!
The last 6 episodes of the series are simply stunning, and are, quite frankly, worth the price of admission all by themselves! "Human Nature/Family Of Blood" has the Doctor on the run from a group of aliens who want to harness his ability to regenerate. Hiding out in pre-WWI England the Doctor "becomes" Human by downloading his Time Lord consciousness into a fob watch, and Martha is tasked with protecting him at all costs. The final lines of the episode, "They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old/Age shall not wither them nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We shall remember them," (from "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon, a commemorative poem written for those who lost their lives in WWI) is especially moving when seen in the context of the story.
The next story "Blink" barely has the Doctor or Martha in it at all, and yet is, without a doubt, one of the most imaginative, inventive, and scary episodes of all the new seasons to date... "Beware the Weeping Angels!!!"
This then leads us into the three-episode finale, "Utopia/The Sound Of Drums/Last Of The Time Lords," which is quite simply magnificent! A new/old favorite returns and travels with the Doctor and Martha to the End Of Time itself, where an even older nemesis is reborn! And even if the ending itself is somewhat weak, even contrived (as is Martha's almost immediate attraction to the Doctor), as many have said, this is still a worthy and emotional conclusion to the season!!! HIGHLY recommended... even with "Hat-Sec!" LOL!
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"I dream I'm this...adventurer. This daredevil. A madman."
Third time's a charm--that's the inevitable cliche that pops to mind. If the first series (season) of Doctor Who was good with some hiccups and the second quite fine overall, the show's creators seem to have really hit their stride with the third series here and brought forth an excellent range of science fiction adventures at once interesting, inventive, and exciting--innovative and unusual but very true to the show's spirit over the decades. Oh, and loads of fun, of course.By now David Tennant has a totally surefire grasp of the Doctor's character and has contributed much to its portrayal--and convincingly developed it in the bargain, especially in light of the events of series two. Eccentric as always, frenetic and off the wall but silently nursing a deep melancholy, open and friendly and yet with a certain emotional distance and brusqueness. The Doctor we all know and love, but a little more complex. You will never get me to say that he's better than Tom Baker as some have, but my sense is that Tennant may very well end up putting as definitive a stamp on the renegade Time Lord for this generation as Baker did for us old-timers. As for the Doctor's companion, it's clear that the writers were wisely avoiding a repeat of Rose (whom we all miss, yes) and going instead for a somewhat more mature and intelligent foil in up-and-coming med student Martha (as played by Freema Agyeman)--a doctor in training, as it were, a bit of cleverness that the writers thankfully capitalize on in her first episode. The chemistry strains a bit to spark at first and the one-sided romance angle is brought in a bit too abruptly perhaps, but still The Doctor and Martha make a nice, believable team overall.The storytelling for this series is excellence itself. Not perfection, mind you, which is humanly impossible anyway, but even the lesser episodes are better than most of what you'll find on TV nowadays--especially when it comes to sci-fi. "The Runaway Bride" is good if slightly twisted holiday fun in the way a Christmas special should be, "Smith and Jones" has a hint of Douglas Adams influence in its satirically-edged motifs of galactic bureaucracies and absurd situations, "The Shakespeare Code" is a highly memorable pseudo-historical starring the Bard himself in a manner totally cohesive with the plot, and "Gridlock" is a claustrophobic return to New New York with an edgier angle. The "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks" two-parter is kind of like comfort food for older Doctor Who fans--a very typical Dalek tale of invasion and mutation, but with a few fresh ingredients like the human/dalek hybrid and the 1930's New York setting. "The Lazarus Experiment" and "42" likewise conform to tried-and-true Doctor Who formulas but successfully so, "42" being something of an cocktail mix of "Ark in Space" and "Inferno" complete with a not overplayed ecological theme.On the other hand, "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" and "Blink" are unlike anything ever before seen really in Doctor Who and really showcase the creativity and never-ending potential of the show. And then finally the three-part epic series conclusion, "Utopia"/"The Sound of Drums"/"The Last of the Time Lords" first takes the Doctor to the Big Crunch and then builds on countless clues scattered throughout all the season's prior episodes to expertly spring quite a surprise on the unsuspecting viewer, the return of...well, if you don't know I won't give it away, but I haven't seen this particular character so masterfully portrayed since the original in the early 1970's. It must be admitted that the climax in part three is just a tad fanciful and will induce a sense of deja vu in anyone who in their childhood attested their belief in magic and clapped their hands accordingly so as to revive Tinkerbell, but this didn't really bother me consciously till well afterwards, meaning that the writers succeeded in getting me to suspend my disbelief long enough for them to get away with their forgivable little cheat.All in all then, the show's creators have struck a fine balance throughout between the futuristic and the pseudo-historical, the cozily familiar and the out-on-a-limb unusual, the thoughtfully speculative and the chills & thrills adventurous. Of course tastes will differ, but my impression anyway is that "Doctor Who" has now really come into its own again as a wonderfully excellent science fiction TV program with this compelling variety of storylines in series three, all of which can be watched and enjoyed again and again (along with all the usual extras and behind-the-scenes programs) on this attractively packaged DVD set--a bit sturdier in design than the last two, thankfully. Only beware, once you start watching you won't even want to blink!
Top reviews from other countries
Kory Scott
David Tennant does another great job as the Doctor and good Job as John Smith. Like Old Classic Who in the 1960's.
Reviewed in Canada on September 8, 2014
John Picard
My Favourite Series
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2014