
by David Finniss
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This episode features plenty of returns. The most obvious one being Martha, who calls the Doctor in to help her with a case she is working on. The other two are only noticeable if you are familiar with the franchise in its classic iteration. As I myself have recently started watching the old serials (haven’t liked them to be honest, but that’s besides the point), I was able to recognize UNIT as the military group that the Doctor worked with in some of his earlier incarnations.
The villains themselves are also from the classic show, and rather popular from what I’ve read. Said villains are a race called the Sontarans, a soldier race that lives for war and battle. Much like the Daleks, I wasn’t sure how serious I was going to be able to take these guys. I mean, they do look a tad goofy, but they grew on me (get it? cause they’re short).
I’m not sure why they’re so bent on taking over Earth. I mean, surely there are other galactic empires that they can go to war with for greater glory. You’d think that on the universal scale, we
aren’t really that high a priority, and yet all of these races seem to go out of their way to give us crap.
Their attack methods are a bit bizarre too. For all the talk about facing your enemy and fighting in honorable combat, they seem to be using a rather underhanded tactic in order to gain the upper hand (man, I am in the zone with the puns today). It is good strategy, I’ll grant you, but it doesn’t seem to be in keeping with the aforementioned honorable combat schtick.
I did like seeing Martha again. It led to some nice moments and, while we haven’t gotten a multi-doctor episode since the relaunch (sans Time Crash), multi-companion episodes work pretty well too. This episode acts as a bit of an inversion of school reunion as Martha and Donna get along swimmingly compared to Rose and Sarah Jane, who initially butted heads before putting aside their jealousies.
Sadly, whereas she spent all of season three being awesome and competent, here, she seems to have lost a step. Sure, she’s an official doctor now and is a high ranking member of UNIT, but she gets captured rather easily and panics in ...