For a brief and spoiler-free review of this season see my season 4 review.
This post, however, is going to be FULL OF SPOILERS.
Season Overview:
This is the Fourth season after the show was revived in 2005. It is a great season with Catherine Tate and David Tennant both doing an excellent job in their respective roles as the new comanion Donna and the Tenth Doctor. Great as the season is I wouldn not reccommend starting with it as it refrences alot of past episodes and seasons and brings many elements together. You are better off starting with Season 1 (2005) or even Season 3 (2007) as this season is better appreciated as a completion and conclusion to the past four seasons and Russel T. Davies era.
BEWARE THE SPOILERS AHEAD
Episode 1: Partners In Crime 4/5/2008
This episode brings Donna, who had previously met the doctor in the Chrismas special The Runaway Bride, back to the TARDIS as a full-time crew member and companion. The episode centers around a fishy company, Adipose, whose pills are supposed to make customers lose weight miraculously overnight. Donna and the Doctor are both investigating this company, but Donna's motivation turns out to be solely that of finding the Doctor. Apparently, she couldn't live with her decision to stay in the real world and she thinks the Doctor is brilliant and amazing and wants to travel with him again. This aspect of the episode really annoyed me. There was a very stupid conversation between Donna and her Grandfather where it sounded like she was in love with him. Fortunately, this kind of thing did not continue. I didn't mind the episode, though, because it began the very funny interaction and friendship between Donna and the Doctor. I just would have preferred to have Donna investigate the company because she thought exposing them was the right thing to do, because she cared about the people who were being tricked/affected, etc.
Episode 2: The Fires of Pompeii 4/12/2008
In this episode the Doctor and Donna travel back in time to Rome. Only it turns out not to be Rome, but Pompeii the night before the volcano erupts. Donna wants the Doctor to interfere, but he says he can't because it might change the whole course of history. He finds himself forced to intervene, however, when he realizes there's alien involvement in the city. The monsters this episode were kind of cool, and the Doctor and Donna's differences made it somewhat interesting, but it wasn't among the best of episodes overall.
Episode 3: Planet of the Ood 4/19/2008
The Ood are back and this time we get some insight into the "second great and bountiful human empire." This episode has some great themes about empire, enslavement, human nature and the willingness of humans to turn a blind eye. It made me like the Ood where I really had not been a fan last time we saw them. The episode was not without its problems, but overall it was a strong story. The best thing about it was that it highlighted Donna's character and her kindhearted nature.
Episode 4: The Sontaran Stratagem (1) 4/26/2008 and Episode 5: The Poison Sky (2) 5/3/2008
It was nice to see Martha again in this two part story. Apparently she still had the phone the Doctor gave her so she made a call across the universe and got through to him in a time of urgent need. A bunch of cars running a system called ATMOS - which is supposed to be environmentally friendly - are thought to be involved in a series of deaths and Martha and the UNIT team think that there is alien involvement. They turn out to be right, of course, and a bunch of actioney stuff ensues. The Sontarans weren't the best of Who villains, but at least they were new! The genius kid bent of world destruction and the whole storyline with Donna's mother and grandfather were all good.
Actually, having Donna and Martha together in one episode highlighted the differences in the way their characters and their families were written and it shows how big a difference there is. Donna's family, like Rose's is given a lot of screen-time and they are written in a way that makes us sympathize with them, but unfortunately Martha's family was not written this well at all. Overall, it was a good, solid episode.
Episode 6: The Doctor's Daughter 5/10/2008
This is my least favorite episode this season. I call it the WORST EPISODE OF THE SEASON because the whole thing felt pointless and it went nowhere. Also, we did not need the Doctor's daughter... her character was completely pointless and the way it was written robbed us of any character development for the Doctor or any emotional impact. Also, the reveal at the end that the time frame and all the generations have been seven days. It just didn't make sense.
Episode 7: The Unicorn and the Wasp 5/17/2008
This is an OUTSTANDING EPISODE. It's a very tight story with a good mystery plot and not too much excessive running around or laser shooting or anything like that. I loved the Agatha Christie connection much more than the other two "history" episodes with Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. For a few minutes I fooled myself into believing that Agatha's disappearance would involve a trip with the Doctor, which would have been very cool, but this did not happen. A really excellent episode.
Episode 8: Silence in the Library 5/31/2008 and Episode 9: Forest of the Dead 6/7/2008
This two-part story was a wonderful mixture of an interesting new location/setting away from earth and a very creepy monster. I loved the interaction with the girl, the helpless running around, even Donna's wacky imprisonment and the "saving" (which btw, I saw coming from miles off). The only thing that ruined this episode for me was the ending scene where the Doctor supposedly "saves" River Song. This is the second time that the Tenth Doctor has condemned someone to a humiliating half-life without flinching. The worst part of it was that we knew, from Donna's experience, how bad that alternate reality half-life was. I just don't understand why they couldn't let the woman die. It would have been a much kinder fate. It's a very frustrating thing for me, but in the end it wasn't enough to erase the awesomeness of the rest of the story for me. I'll just pretend that whole thing didn't happen at all and call this the SECOND BEST STORY OF THE SEASON.
Episode 10: Midnight 6/14/2008
Midnight has all the trappings of a bad action movie. You know those movies that take place on an airplane that's in trouble and interesting or not so interesting things begin to happen to the passengers. Somehow, though this episode manages to be excellent. It's down to the wonderful acting and the creepy - and mysterious - alien creature. It really shows you that less can be more sometimes. The only thing that prevents me from putting it up there at the top with the best of the season is the Doctor's stupidity. He knew exactly what was happening when the alien was learning and yet he would not shut his mouth. He didn't even seem to be trying! Come on writers, the Doctor is not an idiot! With a tiny bit of effort they could have avoided making him look stupid and still had the alien learn at the same time, it just felt like they weren't bothered to use their heads when writing the episode. For that reason I won't call this episode one of the best, but it remains OUTSTANDING.
Episodes 11 Turn Left (1), Episode 12: The Stolen Earth (2), and Episode 13: Journey's End (3)
Turn left was a brilliant episode and The Stolen Earth was almost as good. They really tested Donna's character while at the same time showing how important the Doctor's involvement is for the world. They also brought back many excellent characters like Rose, Jack Harkness, and Martha. But then, when the finale rolled along it didn't quite live up to the build-up. I loved it so much that I could ignore many things, such as Doctor-Donna, Dona defeating the Daleks by typing, the stupidity of the hand-regeneration human meta-crisis thing, the pointlessness of going to the shadow proclamation, and even how ridiculously crowded it was getting. All of this I could live with because it felt like so many loose ends, and not so loose ends, were being brought together and tied up and it was awesome.
The one thing I could not ignore, however, is the treatment of the characters at the end. I really wish Rose hadn't even been there, because what they did to her at the end, banishing her back to that world with the half-human version of the doctor was awful and stupid. If Mickey could return to his original world why couldn't Rose? Why couldn't she be with the real Doctor? And also, why couldn't she do something useful after her parting with Donna? She just ran around looking for the doctor and holding a super huge gun, it was very pointless. They really should have left her stuck in the parallel world after the great ending in Season 2.
Also Donna... How could they be so cruel? I love Donna, but they should have just allowed her to die rather than doom her to that fate and take away all those memories from her. It is particularly cruel because Donna had already been through two similar experiences in the past in Forest of the Dead as well as in Turn Left. It was just too low.
I'm going to give the BEST EPISODE OF THE SEASON award to Turn Left and call The Stolen Earth OUTSTANDING, but Journey's end, I'm afraid misses the mark. I don't usually like to separate the episodes of one story, but in this case they had such a different feel that it really works.
Moral of the Season:
When I finished watching this season my immediate thought was that the writers really should learn a couple of things from this experience:
1) Sometimes a character dying is the best option. Especially if that character happens to be a super awesome character that you killed in a very emotional dramatic scene.
2) There'd better not be any Daleks in any future episode.
Thanks for reading if you got this far. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this or any season or about my reviews. :D Enjoy and look for the Season 5 review and episode breakdown sometime soon. Although I might take a break to review the final installment in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series if I can get myself through it... it's been very, very slow going with that book so far!
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