NuWho Rewatch: The Doctor's Daughter
Mar. 7th, 2015 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatThis is an odd episode in that it feels more significant than it actually is, not only with the introduction of Jenny, but as its place in the season ARC with both Donna and Martha on board the TARDIS.
Jenny is actually very likeable for a character which, one assumes, was at least 50% about stunt casting (I'm inclined to assume the thinking started with "wouldn't it be cool to cast Peter Davison's daughter as the Doctor's daughter" rather than as "we need the Doctor to have a daughter - hey, look, for extra publicity maybe we can cast Davison's daughter" but maybe I'm being overly cynical). Longer term she might have become a bit overwhelmingly perky but she works well here as a contrast to the Doctor's extended sulk over her very existence. The dynamic between the Doctor, Donna and Jenny is also excellent. They are both working to ground him in different ways because they have different strengths when it comes to calling him out. Jenny has the same quick, inquiring mind and inventiveness and he can't hand wave answers. Meanwhile Donna, as always, has homed in on the need for the Doctor to display some humanity and, in particular, to acknowledge Jenny as his own.
Martha, on the other hand, is immediately separated from them and you vaguely wonder what the idea behind her presence was. I have a feeling the point was to underscore her decision to stay behind. Her grief over the Hath's death is her central character beat in the episode - although its a shame that he largely dies because she's pulled a trick worthy of a 1980s companion by falling down a shallow incline and then panicking. It's possible the point is to underscore the extent to which she is a doctor as well as a soldier.
Which leads me on to the fact that I think that this episode and the previous one are trying do, is to elaborate on the themes of the Doctor's relationship to soldiers and his capacity to transform his companions into soldiers. He treats UNIT in The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky remarkably poorly because they are soldiers and part of his initial rejection of Jenny is that she's been created as a soldier. This will, of course, be revisited in the series finale. It's interesting, from this distance, that this season is having the same discussion about the Doctor and soldiering as we saw last season, played out between the twelfth Doctor and Danny, though the issue is framed differently. Here the end point is a discussion about those around him becoming soldiers, while the end point of series 8 is about the Doctor's own role as commander and general (though that is a point that gets raised in passing here as well).
Scuttlebut at the time was that Moffat specifically asked Davies not to kill Jenny at the end of this adventure because he had a interest in reusing the character. If that is true, it's interesting that he hasn't. Of course he may just not have found a story that needs her, or he may have disliked the performance, but one also wonders if there is some politics involved given Geogia Moffat is now married to Tennant (which always freaks me a little when I think about it) and, though he mostly appears a consummate professional, one gets the sense that Tennant was Davies' man.
The world-building, as with a lot of Davies era world-building, doesn't quite hold together. The people just aren't dying fast enough, that we see, for quite so many generations to have come and gone in seven days, and certainly for there to be no one around who actually remembers what was happening seven days ago. One also wonders why half the map is hidden just waiting for the Doctor to come along.
It's a good story, though I think its best part is the Doctor, Donna, Jenny dynamic but then that dynamic is really what the story is about. Everything else is set dressing.
Jenny is actually very likeable for a character which, one assumes, was at least 50% about stunt casting (I'm inclined to assume the thinking started with "wouldn't it be cool to cast Peter Davison's daughter as the Doctor's daughter" rather than as "we need the Doctor to have a daughter - hey, look, for extra publicity maybe we can cast Davison's daughter" but maybe I'm being overly cynical). Longer term she might have become a bit overwhelmingly perky but she works well here as a contrast to the Doctor's extended sulk over her very existence. The dynamic between the Doctor, Donna and Jenny is also excellent. They are both working to ground him in different ways because they have different strengths when it comes to calling him out. Jenny has the same quick, inquiring mind and inventiveness and he can't hand wave answers. Meanwhile Donna, as always, has homed in on the need for the Doctor to display some humanity and, in particular, to acknowledge Jenny as his own.
Martha, on the other hand, is immediately separated from them and you vaguely wonder what the idea behind her presence was. I have a feeling the point was to underscore her decision to stay behind. Her grief over the Hath's death is her central character beat in the episode - although its a shame that he largely dies because she's pulled a trick worthy of a 1980s companion by falling down a shallow incline and then panicking. It's possible the point is to underscore the extent to which she is a doctor as well as a soldier.
Which leads me on to the fact that I think that this episode and the previous one are trying do, is to elaborate on the themes of the Doctor's relationship to soldiers and his capacity to transform his companions into soldiers. He treats UNIT in The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky remarkably poorly because they are soldiers and part of his initial rejection of Jenny is that she's been created as a soldier. This will, of course, be revisited in the series finale. It's interesting, from this distance, that this season is having the same discussion about the Doctor and soldiering as we saw last season, played out between the twelfth Doctor and Danny, though the issue is framed differently. Here the end point is a discussion about those around him becoming soldiers, while the end point of series 8 is about the Doctor's own role as commander and general (though that is a point that gets raised in passing here as well).
Scuttlebut at the time was that Moffat specifically asked Davies not to kill Jenny at the end of this adventure because he had a interest in reusing the character. If that is true, it's interesting that he hasn't. Of course he may just not have found a story that needs her, or he may have disliked the performance, but one also wonders if there is some politics involved given Geogia Moffat is now married to Tennant (which always freaks me a little when I think about it) and, though he mostly appears a consummate professional, one gets the sense that Tennant was Davies' man.
The world-building, as with a lot of Davies era world-building, doesn't quite hold together. The people just aren't dying fast enough, that we see, for quite so many generations to have come and gone in seven days, and certainly for there to be no one around who actually remembers what was happening seven days ago. One also wonders why half the map is hidden just waiting for the Doctor to come along.
It's a good story, though I think its best part is the Doctor, Donna, Jenny dynamic but then that dynamic is really what the story is about. Everything else is set dressing.