Doctor Who – 4x06 – The Doctor’s Daughter (Grade/Discuss)

[Servo]

Welcome to the discussion and grading thread for episode 4x06 – The Doctor’s Daughter. THIS THREAD WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!

On the planet Messaline, in the middle of an endless war, the Doctor meets the most important woman of his life…

Tonight’s episode is on at 6.45pm.

Catch Doctor Who Confidential on BBC3 straight after this episode at 7.30pm.
This episode will be repeated on BBC3 on Sunday May 11th at 8.00pm, and again on Friday May 16th at 9.00pm.

Visit the Doctor Who Website

 

[Count Zero]

Re: Doctor Who – 4x06 – The Doctor’s Daughter (Grade/Discuss)

It's childish, but I'm really excited. And I'm soo looking forward to Donna's remarks...

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Brilliant........Man this season is just churning out some interesting and entertaining Dr who....

 

[diankra]

OK, a mix of good - the actual plot, the playing; and These Are The Voyages-level appalling - the title. Karl Rove would say that calling this The Doctor's Daughter was manipulative and mendacious.

 

[Jamee999]

Re: Doctor Who – 4x06 – The Doctor’s Daughter (Grade/Discuss)

Georgia Moffett is like a brilliant mix between Carey Mulligan, Emma Bunton and Nadia Comaneci (. Just had to get a Romanian in there. Sorry .). Would be surprised if we didn't see her again.

Episode was good overall, but not outstanding.

 

[Jon1701]

I have to go with Average, but a high average. I quite enjoyed it.

It felt very old school who at times (lots of running around and two companions!) and "martha in a tar pit" was crying out for a cliff hanger ending...

Jenny was ok, I like the concept more than the actress. I would have been astonished if she hadn't come back to life at the end. I was expecting a slightly less definitive hook (you could have left it with the gas coming out of her mouth - didnt need her blasting off into space), but it leaves room for future stories.

I mean, there has to be, has to be a Doctor/Jenny special next year.

The Hath were good (great idea), and Martha came off well. Much, much better when she is a companion. The UNIT stuff last week was plain awful. Hath aside, I wasn't a fan of the production design though. I feel like we've been to this planet several times before.

The plot felt secondary to the Doctor/Jenny storyline, which I think was fair enough. In fact, the plot was potentially interesting - but underdeveloped.

On the whole, good stuff.

 

[Jax]

First Average of the season for me but not in a typical bad way I suppose. The problem was that the main plot of the story didn't interest me much and the whole 7 days was a little on the thin ice for me.

I did enjoy Jenny though how she was made seemed rushed and forced but as a character very good. Martha seemed wasted and quite pointless to have in the episode and I didn't care for the Heth either. I could see the Doctor's daughter dying a mile away and her coming back though they did it in a different way.

That source seems to have played a part but do you think it was a one off thing or can she regenerate without changing her face ? Also was it me or did anyone get the feel on the writer ripping off the whole SPOCK/Genesis device with her comig back in that way.

 

[Harry]

I feel cheated with a title like that. Revealing her true nature in the first seconds of the episode was almost enough for me to dismiss the rest of the story

I suppose not knowing anything about the Doctor's past is part of the format now. We didn't even get names for his real family, not even Susan was namechecked. Overall, it didn't add much to the Doctor Who myth. Just a regular episode, with a somewhat more significant guest star.

I mean, there were certainly good emotional scenes in there, and Tennant played it fantastically. It was kind of obvious that as soon as she turned out to be a clone, she had to die at some point. She did, and then they did a sort of half regeneration thing to set up a sequel (or a spin-off!?). I am genuinely looking forward to that, though.

In conclusion, a decent episode, but I was expecting a real epic story, so the end result for me is a "meh".

 

[Jamee999]

Yeah, the whole plot was a bit telegraphed - I had numerous moments where I said what was going to happen in about 3 minutes time. TV should be surprising. Not surprising like Threshold, surprising like Blink .

 

[Jon1701]

Interesting titbit from confidential.

Georgia Moffett went to school with Colin Bakers daughter. She used to think everyone's dad was Doctor Who

 

[USS KG5]

I thought this episode was brilliant and the series so far has been a truly fantastic effort all round IMHO.

I'm surprised no-one has pointed out in this thread yet what a beautiful girl little miss Moffett is!

 

[biotech]

I liked the episode, maybe it resonates more for me because I am a father myself.

Sure the coming back to life bit was cheesy and predictable, and sure, having a creature that appears to be half fish die by being emerged in water seems a little off, but worth it for the Doctor mentioning he was a father before, and by the implication, to more than just the parent of Susan, sounded like he had a few.

The thing did come across as being very anti bible, I cant see this episode going down well in the bible belt.

Myth of creation, a race created in 7 days, a garden of eden, a girl made from a peice of a man..

Plus every time I see the 10th Doctor refuse to kill someone, it makes me think of his very first episode, where he killed the sycorax leader, how was it right then but never again since?

 

[Bishbot]

Plus every time I see the 10th Doctor refuse to kill someone, it makes me think of his very first episode, where he killed the sycorax leader, how was it right then but never again since?

He gave the Sycorax leader a choice and he chose to try to kill The Doctor, its the same as with the Sontarans last week. Cob had no choice - he was in the power of those guards. I think that's the difference, although it probably does vary a bit from writer to writer.

Good episode, above average from me, I also predicted her returning to life although I was hoping for a full regeneration - nothing against the actress of course, but it would have felt more climactic.

I loved the seven day war thing. I mean, it didn't really make much sense, but it was a very original concept which I really dug. (I think if they'd set up how high the casualty rate was a bit better then maybe it would have been more believable - I suppose that was budget and time restraints - I could see it working very well in a book.)

 

[USS KG5]

He gave the Sycorax leader a choice and he chose to try to kill The Doctor, its the same as with the Sontarans last week. Cob had no choice - he was in the power of those guards. I think that's the difference, although it probably does vary a bit from writer to writer.

Well the two situations are not the same either. The Doctor killed on both occasions to avoid the deaths of others, and killing to avoid the deaths of others is always at most his second option, he always gives them a chance to walk away, and in fact allows the Sycorax ship to do just that - and is sickened when Torchwood blows it up.

Killing Cobb would just be revenge, and revenge really never ends well, if you kill someone to avenge your dead daughter it will not bring them back, and in the long run it will make you feel worse. In the Middle East and Northern Ireland we have consistently seen the price of vengeance and the Doctor is spot on to not approve of it.

 

[matthunter]

I loved the seven day war thing. I mean, it didn't really make much sense, but it was a very original concept which I really dug. (I think if they'd set up how high the casualty rate was a bit better then maybe it would have been more believable - I suppose that was budget and time restraints - I could see it working very well in a book.)

You had to struggle to hear it, but the status reports as the Doc and Co. are brought before Cobb say "Generation 6427 (I'm guessing) extinct..."

 

[matthunter]

Killing Cobb would just be revenge, and revenge really never ends well, if you kill someone to avenge your dead daughter it will not bring them back, and in the long run it will make you feel worse. In the Middle East and Northern Ireland we have consistently seen the price of vengeance and the Doctor is spot on to not approve of it.

The whole thing works quite well as a moral advisement against cycles of violence. The humans and the Haff are both fighting because they've been "raised" by a previous generation that told them the other side were evil and needed to be utterly destroyed. You could easily extrapolate it to the Israel/Palestine conflict, or pretty much any other generational war we've ever had (agreed on Northern Ireland!).

We have in the Doctor a man who isn't exactly truthful when he says he "never would", but also the same man who was willing to help a Dalek in Evolution of the Daleks simply because he wouldn't commit genocide again even if it was against the beings that helped destroy his entire race.

 

[DarkHorizon]

Who's your daddy?

Oh, come on - someone was going to say it...

Did anyone else feel like half the story was missing? Or just me? It felt like things moved forward far too quickly, and some plot points just didn't add up - especially that whole "seven days" thing. And the Hath - were we meant to actually hear their speech? Confidential suggests yes, which would certainly have helped with the Martha storyline, a plotline I felt was completely superfluous. If we were supposed to learn things about the Hath, it didn't work.

Mmm... Georgia Moffett - even nicer as a redhead, btw...

Regeneration without physical change? Odd. But, hopefully we'll get to see Jenny again (spin-off series? I say yes!). More excellent work from Tennant and Tate, not so much from Freema. She felt a bit stilted, and a bit over-the-top on several occasions.

Not sure about next week's, though.

 

[RevdKathy]

First one I was a little under impressed with this season.

The title was a set-up with a very weak cop out. I found myself wondering how unlikely it would be for the machine to generate a female from male dna. Not impossible (as male from female would be) but unlikely. One also had to assume that the machine had been brought with the initial colony (why?) and had been completely reprogrammed in the intervening week to generate specifically soldiers. Female soldiers. (Wouldn't all males be more useful - especially if you could set it to generate women when you had colonised and reverted to more normal propagation methods?) To be accurate, female soldiers wearing eye-liner. That was the first point that the plot failed to engage me...

The 'message' might as well have been written by Richard Dawkins, from the moment Cobb claimed to have God on his side, while the Doctor claimed to have Reason. The whole 'it's only a myth' thing got old very quickly.

I nearly came in here after the first ten minutes to see what odds I could get on Jenny dying before the end. Mind, it was so obvious, I doubt I'd have got any takers.

Martha seemed irrelevent. In fact, they said in Confidential that they only did her story because there wasn't room for her in the main story. Her wholesome acceptance of the Hath made a nice contrast to Donna's response to the Ood - making a clear distinction of someone who travelled with the Doctor for some time. Of course, the good Fish had to die, too. Was I the only one who thought of Skin of Evil? - oh, and Stargate Atlantis for the city, too.

Oh, and Jenny blinked at least once after she'd died. It was very noticeable because of her eyeliner...

Mind, she's a fun character. Something tells me she'll be back. RTD won't be able to resist!

 

[wamdue]

Georgia Moffett went to school with Colin Bakers daughter. She used to think everyone's dad was Doctor Who

yes that was cute, but I was wondering what the hell happened to her hair.

meanwhile whilst a fine episode, I cant quite decide if Jenny is a very cool idea, or VERY ill advised.

and I like that they are forcing the Doctor to realise what a solider he is, its something thats crossed my mind before

 

[biotech]

Anyone notice the inside of Jenny's shuttle had a distinctly "roundell" appearance?