I got kind of busy with school after reviewing the first two seasons. So, here is a list of my ten favorite episodes with David Tennant as The Doctor.
Alonsy!
Disclaimer:
10. Army of Ghosts/Doomsday
This is the end of Rose Tyler, and it actually starts out with her narrating the episode as "the story of how I died". Maybe that is a little dramatic considering she doesn't really die, but we have to get everyone freaking out at the finale, now don't we?
This is a Cybermen/Dalek collaboration 2-parter. Torchwood is officially introduced, and is much more funded than in the independent series. Rose and Jackie both end up in the TARDIS which gets confiscated by Torchwood after "ghosts" start appearing all over London. The ghosts are of course cybermen, and are entering through a rift which the Daleks use as well. All hell breaks loose, and Rose's father from an alternate universe crosses over to help the good fight.
I really liked this episode because it not only ended Rose's reign as Companion, but gave me a better feeling for her in the end. Kind of like how Charlie redeemed himself right before he died in LOST. She narrated the two episodes with morose maturity that I couldn't help but empathize with. She gave her life to save the world, and was saved in a split second by her father, only to be stuck in his alternate universe.
Yes, she was alive. Yes, she could spend the rest of her life with her father who was dead in her own timeline. But none of that mattered as soon as she was away from her beloved Doctor, and who could blame her?
I actually cried at the end of this episode when they met on the beach. The fact that they couldn't touch each other kills me every time. That solitary tear on the Doctor's face doesn't help either. This heart-breaking, gut-wrenchingly emotional finale is definitely one of the best Rose episodes of the series.
9. Midnight
This is one of the scariest episodes I have ever seen. Ever. This is scarier than any movie I have ever seen. Ever. There are no Daleks or Sontarans or Cybermen in this episode. Hell, even Donna takes a hike and gets a massage while The Doctor embarks on a fun little ride to planet Midnight.
The Doctor and a bunch of random passengers visit Midnight, a planet that supposedly has a bunch of diamonds on it. Once they land, the pilots die, and the young blonde woman above gets possessed. Only she doesn't spew vomit everywhere or yell in a deep voice chanting 666. She just sits there and waits until someone engages her. She waits until they speak, and repeats everything they say until everyone goes mad and turns on each other. This thing gave me nightmares. But I loved it.
8. Love and Monsters
On a lighter note, this is an episode that hardly features The Doctor or Rose at all. It's about a guy named Elton who loves conspiracy theories and is obsessed with The Doctor. He meets others like himself, and most of the episode is light and funny. The group he finds meets a stranger who becomes their leader and ends up turning into an Absorbathing.... Absorbatron... Absorbaloff. He absorbs all of his friends for energy, and The Doctor finally shows up to his rescue. This is kind of a quirky episode, but is still one of my ultimate favorites!
7. Smith and Jones
Finally! A companion who is smart and brunette and in the medical field (ha ha). All self-comparison aside, I really do love Martha Jones as The Doctor's Companion. She is highly logical, and is just trying to do her job at her clinical site. Is it her fault that the hospital gets sent to the moon during all of this? No.
The Doctor recognizes her intelligence and recruits her to help him find the Plasmavore (difference between this and a vampire?). To deter the alien guards also looking for this Plasmavore, he kisses Martha passionately on the mouth to fool their DNA scanners. A simple distraction for him, a giant festering crush for Martha. 900 years in this universe, and the man still hasn't figured the ladies out? Come on...
The two of them find the culprit and deliver her to the authorities before the hospital is sent back to Earth. Martha goes about her day, meets her family at a bar, and finds The Doctor and the TARDIS in an alley. He asks her to be his companion and travel the stars with him. She says "Ummm, I'm in medical school". He says "Umm, it's also a time machine, hello: Time And Relative Dimension In Space, jeez!" (not actual dialog).
She says okay.
6. Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Inception, you've got a brother dreaming. This double episode came out before Christopher Nolan's gem, and starts with Donna and The Doctor answering a distress call from the biggest library in the universe, but no one is there.
They meet a science team who informs them of flesh-eating animals that live in the shadows. The leader of this team is Professor River Song who implies that she is someone from The Doctor's past, or rather his future. You know how tricky time travel is. Anyways, Donna is teleported to the TARDIS to avoid being killed by the shadows, and arrives in a fake life where she gets married and has children. She begins to see the flaws in this world, and similar themes of Inception are put into play.
River grows closer to the Doctor but is afraid to tell him too much. She gives him her diary and her (his) sonic screwdriver. She whispers his real name in his ear, but it is inaudible to viewers. She ends up sacrificing herself to save all of the souls that are saved in the library's hard drive (Donna and hundreds of others). She tells The Doctor of the last time they met, and that he was crying because he knew what was going to happen to her. The Doctor uses her (his) screwdriver to send her soul into the fake utopia the hard drive had created for Donna. It was the least he could do for her, and he hasn't even really met her yet. Heartbreaking. So glad we get to meet her again in Season 5.
5. The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
The Earth gets stolen, just as the title implies. The Daleks transport it, along with every other planet, to a specific location to form some sort of super weapon that will wipe out all existence. This shift in locations causes dimensions to leak into each other.
Rose, Mickey, and Jackie all come back to fight off those damned Daleks. Sarah Jane Smith and her son join forces with Captain Jack Harkness and Torchwood, following orders from former Prime Minister Harriet Jones to find The Doctor. Martha Jones works for UNIT and travels to Germany to threaten the Daleks with the destruction of the Earth. The Doctor and Donna visit the Shadow Proclamation (so cool), and Donna gets condolences on her future loss...
Donna merges her DNA with The Doctor's and becomes half Time Lord, half human. She defeats the Daleks single-handedly. She also creates a Doctor clone. Whoops :). She sets everything right, and all of the planets back to their original orbits.
The best part of this episode is in this moment when all four companions are in the TARDIS together. The Doctor explains that the TARDIS is supposed to have seven pilots, but he just manages to do it all himself. Sarah Jane, Rose, Martha, Donna, Mickey, Jack and the two Doctors all pilot the TARDIS back to safety. They drop everyone off in their places like some demented car-pool, and arrive at Bad Wolf Bay in the alternate dimension Rose came from.
She begins to mope, but he tells her she does not belong in this dimension, and neither does his clone. He finally tells her he loves her, and his clone offers to spend the rest of his life with her. They kiss and close the gap between dimensions. Win win, if you ask me.
Everything seems to be fine now that people are home safe and the Daleks are neutralized, right? God, I wish. Donna begins to overheat like a robot on hyperdrive. Her brain can't handle the vast knowledge of a time lord, and The Doctor has to act fast before she burns up and dies. What? Yeah. She's talking just like him and moving so fast, he has to wipe her memory of him completely in order for her to survive.
Dammnit! I really loved Donna! She was so human and loud and obnoxious. She was caring and kind and sympathetic as well as being crass and hilarious. I think she was the best fit for The Doctor, and that is coming from a Martha Jones fan. I mean, I just.... I can't.....
He takes her home and explains it to her mother and granddad. He says they can't even mention him or her adventures, or she will die. He shakes her hand as he is about to leave, and she is too busy on the phone to even really acknowledge him. It is awful. Not remembering The Doctor is much worse than being in an alternate universe with his clone, if you ask me.
4. The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords
Martha, The Doctor, and Jack Harkness return to the present after visiting the "end of the universe" where they met another time lord called "The Master". He hot-wired the TARDIS and went far back enough in time to ruin Martha's life and become Prime Minister. Although he is absolutely prime evil, he is hilarious and kind of hard to hate.
He captures Martha's family and puts them into slavery, holds Jack in handcuffs, and ages The Doctor so much that he is wrinkled in a wheelchair. Martha escapes with Jack's watch and travels cross country for an entire year. She is searching for a weapon that can kill a time lord without him regenerating, but ends up getting caught by The Master. He brings her to his spaceship above ground where he watches the entire human race being targeted by flying alien balls (yeah, you read that right). Martha flashes back to The Doctor telling her to "use the countdown". She also remembers outsmarting everyone she encountered on her trek across the globe.
The clock strikes zero on The Master's ship, and is supposed to signal the end of the world. What it does signal, however, is something entirely different. Martha stands up to The Master and tells him that no weapon can kill a time lord. The Doctor scoffs and says "Do you actually think I would make her kill?" As the clock strikes zero, flashes of Martha telling the story of The Doctor to everyone across the world appear. She explains that nothing is more powerful than one cohesive thought by everyone at one time. In essence, the word "Doctor" is exclaimed across the world, and the idea of Prayer sets the Doctor free. The spell is broken, and he regains his strength. He approaches The Master and with one sentence, shakes him to his core.
"I forgive you."
Holy shit. I have goosebumps just thinking about it. "I forgive you"? Amazing! How spiritual, yet non-denominatioal. This show has so many good qualities. Civil rights for all races and species are highly advocated for throughout this series. There is no homophobia or racism at all. It's as if they never existed, and now this wonderful power of forgiveness? Awesome.
The Master's wife shoots him as The Doctor is trying to console him. The Doctor begs him to regenerate, and tells him they can be brothers. The Master accepts defeat and tells him it is over. The Doctor cries as he holds the last of his kind in his arms, and watches him die.
Time resets itself, and it's as if nothing ever happened. Martha takes her family home and leaves The Doctor. In a manner of words, she tells him that she is in love with him and knows that he is not in love with her. She tells him that it is too much for her family to endure, and that she must finish medical school. I guess I can't blame her; I would want to finish my degree as well, especially if no time had technically passed.
The good thing is that we see more of Martha in future seasons, and not just in Doctor Who. She eventually joins Captain Jack Harkness' Torchwood team, and helps fight aliens with her medical expertise. Martha is my favorite Companion, and this episode shows the great depth of her character.
3. Blink
Also super scary, this is my favorite non-finale, non-emotional episode. Like
Love and Monsters, this hardly features The Doctor or Martha at all. Instead, a young woman named Sally Sparrow (above) finds mysteriously accurate notes on the walls of an old abandoned house. These notes tell her to beware the Weeping Angel, and to duck right before something is thrown at her. Below the note it says "Love From The Doctor 1969".
Already cool, right? The Doctor and Martha are stuck back in the year 1969, and are trying to get ahold of our new heroin. Sally tells her friend about the weird occurrence and brings her to the old house. While snooping around, someone knocks on the door and hands her a package. Her best friend is hiding in the hall in case it is someone scary, and disappears forever. The person giving her the package is her friend's great grandson. Just like when Doc Brown gets struck by lightning in
Back To The Future III and the letter is waiting only seconds later for Marty "at this exact location, at this exact time", Sally gets a package from her now deceased friend.
The package is full of pictures of her life in Ireland, 1920. Diary entries and a personal note tell Sally to visit her brother to tell him that she is alright. She honors this wish and talks to her brother who owns a video store. There she discovers clips of The Doctor on several different DVDs talking directly to her. She gets all of the DVDs with him on it, and decides to play them all at once when inside the old house. It plays as a free flowing conversation.
Here The Doctor tells Sally of The Weeping Angels, or "The Lonely Assassins". They appear to be angels when you look at them, but once you take your eyes off of them, even for a second, they will attack. They touch you and send you so far back in time that you are dead to all of those around you. They even took The Doctor and Martha away from the TARDIS. Sounds like an "okay" way to die if you ask me, but still kind of scary.
Sally realizes that the old house is swimming with Weeping Angels, and her and her friend's brother try to find the TARDIS and bring it back to The Doctor. Maybe they do... maybe they don't.
They do!
There are a lot of cool plot points I left out for this one; not only because it's confusing, but they are better when you watch it for yourself. This episode is action-packed, and things happen instantaneously for Sally when they take decades for others. It is very reminiscent of the Back to the Future trilogy, and just may be why it is my 3rd favorite episode!
2. Human Nature/Family of Blood
The Doctor and Martha are on the run from an alien family who have traced his DNA. He puts his "being" inside a pocket watch, hands it to Martha with explicit instructions, and makes himself human. He does this with some weird machine on his head so that the family cannot trace his time lord DNA. Pretty smart for him; pretty sad for Martha.
They land in England 1910 or so, sometime around WWI. The Doctor has no recollection of who he is, but knows that he and Martha (his servant) are friends. He is a schoolteacher and ends up falling in love with the school nurse (above). This nurse is kind of rude to Martha for being so "close" with The Doctor (now named John Smith), and immediately gets a D- for likability. She is a prude, but very flirty with John, and always talks down to Martha as if she is a lesser person.
I know that this is the time period, and there is nothing we can do. Martha, herself, freaks out from time to time because she is black, and asks The Doctor if it is alright for her to be there. He is oblivious to race or color and asks her why not. She says "Not exactly white," and points to herself. She expresses her fear of being put into slavery several times. Even though it is not technically slavery, she is still a lowly servant in this double episode, and no one takes her seriously. Not even The Doctor. And she is a medical student for crying out loud! So sad.
Anyways, a cool thing about this episode is that John Smith dreams of being The Doctor almost as if it is his alter ego. He keeps a daily journal with drawings and writings about his adventures. He shows Martha, but also shows the school nurse. She thinks it's genius. Martha takes it as a sign of hope.
The family hunting them takes 3 months to die without food. So Martha has to deal with The Doctor being a dumb ass for three whole months until some drunk kid finds their ship and ruins everything (per usual). The aliens take form of whatever life they take; so a little girl, another servant, the drunk kid, and a fat guy run around terrorizing the school. Oh yeah, and they also inhabit the bodies of the scarecrows in the fields.
The family raids the school dance and demands to talk to The Doctor. Only The Doctor doesn't know who he is. Martha tries to convince John Smith to open the pocket watch to get his identity back, but some kleptomaniac kid stole it from his office and is hiding in a corner somewhere. Martha pleads with him and tells him that his dreams are true. She hands him his sonic screwdriver, but he denies it. The whole process is extremely frustrating.
Basically the whole school takes up arms against the family, and Martha, John Smith, the school nurse, and the kleptomaniac hide in this house. They are afraid, and Martha is pissed off. The family finds the TARDIS, and threatens The Doctor. Martha hands him the pocket watch, and strings of dialog from The Doctor start coming out of John Smith. He scares himself and the school nurse. The double acting by David Tennant in this scene is impeccable. It rips your heart out. If it doesn't, I might start doubting your own humanity.
To become The Doctor again and save the school, "John Smith" has to die.
Needless to say, he has a hard time.
He figures it out and opens the watch. He tricks the family into believing he is still stupid and destroys their ship. He goes back and consoles the school nurse who is actually smart enough to figure out that he is a different person now. She speaks of John Smith in the third person. She asks to keep the diary, and he lets her.
In the last adventure of the Tenth Doctor, The End Of Time, he visits the school nurse's great granddaughter who has written a book about the diary. She is doing a book signing and he asks her if she was happy in the end. The great granddaughter looks up at him and says "Yes... Were you?". Chilling. A perfect ending among others in that episode.
1. Turn Left
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you hadn't met the person you are with? Have you ever though back to the exact moment or decision that dictated if that happened or not? Donna Noble goes to a psychic reading where she is forced to do exactly that. She visits a psychic who convinces her to "Turn Left" instead of right so that she takes a different job, doesn't meet her evil fiance, and doesn't help The Doctor get out of a flooded building. In short, The Doctor is dead because of one little decision to turn left.
This episode follows Donna through this decision and many others. All of the disasters The Doctor prevented end up happening. Everything he did with Martha (he met Donna right before Martha and then came back to her) is discarded. Everyone in the hospital dies including Sarah Jane Smith who was there in his stead, the spider star stays in the sky until Torchwood comes, and the Titanic crashes into England and causes hundreds of people to be homeless.
Donna and her family become homeless and have to live in a small flat with another large family. The cultural relevance to the Great Depression is vivid here, and you can see it in her family's faces. Adipose goes wild across America, and terrible things keep happening. Over time, the family she is staying with is sent off to a "labor camp" to find work in the city. Her grandfather knows better and starts to cry.
"That's what they called them the first time: labor camps."
Throughout all of this fun excitement, Rose has been appearing to Donna. She seems to enter this dimension through bolts of lightning not unlike The Terminator. She tells her that a darkness is coming, and that she needs to change it. She tries to tell her about The Doctor, but it doesn't ring a bell. She takes her to a military base because she thinks she sees something on her back.
Rose is highly regarded by the military personnel here, and refuses to give them her real name in fear of a paradox. She puts Donna in front of several different mirrors to see what is on her back, and the result is terrifying.
Gross. (It's a bug).
Donna freaks out and asks Rose what is going on. Rose is extremely calm, and reassures Donna that everything will be okay. She shows Donna the TARDIS they found after The Doctor's death. They have hooked up several wires to it, and have managed to create a time machine out of their limited materials. They ask Donna to go back in time and turn right. They tell her to change her own mind in any way she can so that The Doctor may live.
Donna agrees and goes back in time. She is several blocks from where she is when she has to turn right, and barely makes it to her destination. She knows she cannot actually talk to herself without driving herself crazy, so she makes a very bold decision. Donna Noble throws herself in front of a truck so that if she were to turn left, she would have to wait in traffic because there was an accident. She makes herself turn right by sacrificing herself.
Before she dies, Rose comes up to her and whispers something in her ear. After that, she is transported back to the psychic's office and quickly finds The Doctor. She tells him everything and he asks her what Rose told her. She tells him:
This heralds the finale "The Stolen Earth". Such a great setup. I have always been a firm believer in the phrase "Everything happens for a reason". This episode only further proves that. The tenth Doctor was truly great, and he, along with his companions, will be greatly missed.
Namaste
