The Doctor’s Daughter
Story 193, Episode 744, Series 4 Episodes 6
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
Companions: Donna Noble, Martha Jones
The Doctor’s Daughter tries to position itself as a seminal episode, exploring big ideas but it is unable to live up to its ambition.
The Review
Well, just last story I discussed how disinterested it was in interrogating the Doctor and militarism, and then this one rolls along. It gives it the old college try, but still doesn’t really work. The Doctor, Donna, and Martha are dropped in an eternal struggle between humans and the Hath in the tunnels of a failed colony world. Soldiers are quickly grown as full adults out of machines, the Doctor has his hand stuck in one, out rolls Jenny, blonde, perky, his daughter. (Georgia Moffett is the daughter of the 5th Doctor Pete Davison…and then marries David Tennant). The Doctor immediately takes a disliking to her a soldier, a generalization that was not effective in Series 8 and isn’t here. A better reason is the Doctor explaining to Donna that she reminds him of his dead child(ren), a big lore reveal I had forgotten about. For as harsh as he is initially to her, the Doctor is very quickly won over by her. Jenny’s best moment comes when explaining that the Doctor is a soldier, perhaps the best soldier of them all, flustering her. This story could’ve used one more twist of the knife in that respect, not the shooting of Jenny and the Doctor proudly proclaiming he is a pacifist. Jenny is a classic lore character, which explains her popularity, but I didn’t find myself really wanting more.
Unfortunately, we get little Donna/Martha time as Martha is exiled on her own side quest with a Hath. It is emotional when the Hath sacrifices himself to save her from some quicksand or something, but really Martha feels out alone on her own little island. The acting of the soldiers and General Cobb isn’t too great, with Cobb looking like a bad John Hurt impression. What works very well is the revelation that this eternal war has only lasted a week despite generations being massacred, which should serve to show the futility of combat but again, not really pressed on more. The performance from David Tennant is quite emotional and affecting, and it shows just how much he cared for his daughter. Another person close to the Doctor getting burned. The theme of the season is what the Doctor does to other people, but we also get looks into what they do to him. In the best scene, Donna tells the Doctor that he speaks so much but never really says anything, and that sums up the Tenth Doctor. He is not as far from the war-shattered veteran that the Ninth Doctor was as he would like to think, and it is clear that the Doctor’s mask for his pain has only grown in intensity. I just wish this story better explored that, and gave Martha something cool to do for God’s sake.
This story finally isn’t a romp, but it unfortunately is mediocre. I don’t think Doctor Who would finally get the anti-war thing down until The Zygon Inversion.
7.5/10 Fun in the moment, but not much staying power for what should be a seminal story.
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