The Doctor's Daughter

This is such a lacklustre episode, it could have been so good.

The Doctor, Donna and Martha land on Messaline, when they leave the TARDIS a guard randomly puts the Doctor's hand into machinery, which creates his daughter Jenny. We discover a battle between humans and the Hath. Martha is kidnapped but helps a Hath, the Doctor meets leader General Cobb, he explains the planet's history.

Why did the guards stick his hand in that device? It made zero sense.

I love how Peter Davison's daughter Georgia Moffett played Jenny, it's a great twist of fate.

It doesn't really work, it's flat on so many levels, the script is so random, it feels heavily rushed. I applaud Moffett's performance, she was very good, great performance. I can't decide if I like the hath or not, or the cloning machine.

It is however strangely engaging on an emotional level. Tennant is quite tetchy, it's Donna driving the story once again, and also being the clever and observant one.

Poor Martha seems sadly plonked in this story and her presence is rather pointless, she spends so little time with the Doctor, it's almost demeaning. For a girl that's walked across the whole planet she's looking rather clumsy. Her Hath is so cuddly.

The ending doesn't really do it for me, there's not enough of an emotional connection for it to work, had it been Martha, maybe so.

It's like the TARDIS has landed on site of a dodgy 90's Sega game.

"The Doctor's Daughter" is a fast paced episode with the title explained within minutes of the titles rolling.

The Doctor's daughter is played by the wonderful Georgia Moffett. Moffett's natural beauty is hardly surprising given that her parents are Peter Davison and Sandra Dickinson. She gives a great performance here and delivers her lines with zeal.

My only reservation about the episode is the level of emotional porn that is shoe-horned into the 45 minutes. Even Spielberg would blush at the audience manipulation present here. Still, despite this criticism, I cried like a baby in this tale so the makers are doing something right.

8 out of 10. The eagle eyed will recognise one of the locations out of Torchwood's "Captain Jack Harkness" episode.

My recollection of Season four is that it has a passible, if uninspired start, but the back half is much, much improved. Unfortunately, for me, that improvement hasn't yet started with "The Doctor's Daughter" an episode that's far more notable for the off-screen events, than for anything on it.

With two companions on board, the Tardis decides to lead an adventure of its own and transports the Doctor (David Tennant), Donna (Catherine Tate) and Martha (Freema Agyeman) to the planet Messaline, where a war between the humans and the fish like Hath has raged for generations. Before they're appraised of what's going on though, the Doctor is placed into a biological sampler and a new soldier, Jenny (Georgia Tennant) is cloned from him. The Doctor takes an instant dislike Jenny due to her militaristic imprint, but also as he reminds her of a family lost long ago.

As I say, this one is more notable for the meeting of David Tennant with his future wife, Georgia Moffett. The title of the episode is an in-joke itself, for those who knew that Moffett is the daughter of former Doctor, Peter Davison. She closely resembles her mother throughout this episode, the American actress Sandra Dickinson, who has an iconic British science fiction role of her own, that of Trillian in "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy". Whilst she's charming in this, Jenny isn't particularly interesting and I'm not disappointed about the fact the character hasn't really been mentioned again since, not in the main show, anyway.

There are some clever ideas in this episode. The idea of a cloned army and imprinted memories giving a false narrative about the war they are fighting, a reminder that the Doctor once had an actual family. . . But I can't help but feel that everything about this episode is contrived around the idea of casting that specific actress to play that specific role, and the story being retrofitted around that, even down to the "Wrath of Kahn" ending.

Like all of this season so far, fine, if unremarkable.

Human and Hath don't get on, no recollection of how this began, perpetually fighting, genetically rewriting, the meaning of life down the pan.

The TARDIS takes control and whisks the Doctor, Donna and the unsuspecting Martha off to Messaline, where two warring subterranean factions are at loggerheads, although neither has a log attached to their heads but one does make use of a futuristic soda stream. After inadvertently spawning a daughter through a clone machine, losing Martha and subsequently breaking out of confinement, there is a good old chase, lots of running, and we find out that Donna is probably a pretty useful Sudoku player. Oh yes, a door is opened to a spin off - which failed to rotate.

Of course the Doctor's daughter is something everyone looked forward to! I mean it's his daughter!!!!! But, this episode was slightly disappointing. The acting was so-so, and the plot was very fast paced! So it did keep my attention. But for some reason the episode didn't give me everything I wanted. You sort of know how it's gonna end at the beginning, but don't jump to conclusions! There are a few twists in the story to keep things interesting. But somehow this story fell a little flat. Maybe it was the way the writers tried to bring the daughter in so quickly and not really give us any reason to like her. Or perhaps the ending that makes you think: "wait...what? so....what?" Or maybe it's just creepy if you know that Tennant and the Dr's daughter are real life husband and wife. Or were at some time. Anyway, high hopes for next week, when it comes to story!