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Cast
Crew
The TARDIS takes the Doctor, Donna and Martha to the planet Messaline, where armed men seize the Doctor. Recognising them all as people who can provide new DNA to the army, they use his diploid cells to produce the titular character, Jenny. She emerges from a machine after being grown at an accelerated pace as an adult soldier, and almost immediately is engaged in a skirmish with a species called the Hath. During the disarray Martha is kidnapped by a Hath soldier. The Doctor and Donna are separated from Martha by an explosion triggered by Jenny. The Doctor tries to go after Martha, but the soldiers detain him and insist he be brought before General Cobb. Cobb explains that originally the humans and Hath can come to this planet to share it, but the Hath lied and they have been at war for generations. Cobb also explains a desire to recover lost divine knowledge from their goddess of “the source”, which would effectively end the war. While trying to use a holographic map to find Martha, The Doctor accidentally reveals a previously unknown route to the temple to Cobb. Unbeknown to them, the Doctor has also inadvertently revealed the map to Martha and the Hath, who have come to trust her after she helps one of their injured. The Doctor tries to talk Cobb out of going after "the Source", which he intends to use to slaughter the Hath, but Cobb is distrustful of the Doctor and Donna's peaceful intentions and has them along with Jenny (as she comes from the Doctor) imprisoned.
The Doctor is having trouble perceiving Jenny as his daughter, claiming she is nothing more than a soldier. As he plans how to stop Cobb Jenny perceives the Doctor to be akin to a General, making plans and strategies, which the Doctor denies. He used his sonic screwdriver to convert Donna’s mobile phone to a superphone to contact Martha, which Jenny remarks is much like a weapon used to achieve a goal. Martha is studying the tunnels on Messaline herself, working with the Hath she saved, and plans to travel to the surface to reach the Temple. Donna persuades the Doctor to use his stethoscope to confirm that Jenny has two hearts, but he remains convinced that Time Lords are defined by their shared suffering. And that while she and he may be biologically alike, there is much more to being a Time Lord. Jenny is confused by what they are saying and the Doctor explains he is the last of his kind, a traveler of time and space. He explained that all his people died in a massive war, that he had to kill, which Jenny indicates that they are more alike than unalike. The Hath use a battering ram to break through a barrier in the tunnels. Martha and her Hath friend reach a hatch that leads the surface which is barely hospitable. Although there is a cold wind, they are both grateful to be on the planet’s surface. Meanwhile, Jenny has helped the Doctor and Donna to escape their cell, where Donna notices a plaque indicating 8 numbers. As they travel she continues to notice more plaques, counting down as they near the Temple. The Doctor opens a door with the sonic screwdriver, finding a system of deadly lasers on the other side. Jenny runs off to try and hold off Cobb, which the Doctor unsuccessfully tries to stop as he knows how killing can change a person.
The Doctor disarms the lasers while Jenny holds off Cobb’s men with gunfire without injuring them, as the Doctor's words had an impact on her. As Jenny tries to follow the Doctor and Donna, the laser grid reactivates and she is forced to traverse the lasers with an impressive display of acrobatics. Meanwhile Martha falls down an incline while travelling to the Temple and starts to sink in some black quicksand, but is saved by the Hath accompanying her, who subsequently drowns. She continues onto the temple, crying in mourning. Jenny questions the Doctor and Donna's relationship, which both are adamant is purely platonic. Donna that they save planets, rescue civilisations, defeat awful creatures. And also do an outrageous amount of running. This leads to a conversation about Jenny's future and to her happiness the Doctor wants her to come with him. After Jenny runs ahead to scout, The Doctor explains to Donna his previous parenting, the pain of losing the Time Lords and his family, and the fact that he is reminded of them when he sees Jenny. That is why he has been having a hard time dealing with this. Donna is sure that having Jenny in his life will help him heal those old wounds though.
The Doctor, Donna, Jenny and Martha are reunited in the temple, which the Doctor recognises as the original and fully functional colony spaceship. While the Doctor discovers that the city was built by robots, Donna discovers the numbers they have been seeing are dates. She realized that the city must have been built in sections outwards from the spaceship. She deduces the war, which has gone on for so many "generations", has in fact been going on for just seven days. The Doctor realizes that the term "generations" is a relative term here as that the method of reproduction the humans and the Hath use allow for 20 generations to be born a day. As both armies close in, they next discover "The Source", a terraforming device which would make the environment outside more hospitable. Thus, despite the belief that the source kills, it actually brings life. The Doctor, now surrounded by both armies, declares the war over and smashes the source to release its gases and start the terraforming process. Both armies lay down their weapons in awe of the new planet forming around them. However Cobb tries to shoot the Doctor out of revenge, but Jenny sacrifices herself by shielding him, getting shot in the heart instead of him. Cobb is immediately restrained by his soldiers. Martha realises Jenny will not survive as the wound is fatal. Jenny apparently dies in the Doctor’s arms without regenerating, even though the Doctor recalls she has two hearts, so she may survive given enough time. Martha points out that there is no sign of her regenerating, and that while she is like the Doctor, it may not have been enough. The Doctor feels she was actually too much like him. After he lays he head gently on the ground, the Doctor holds Cobb at gunpoint but does not pull the trigger, saying, “I never would”.
He asks both armies that they let the idea of a man 'who never would', be the foundation of the Hath-human society that will now emerge. The Hath and Humans ask the Doctor to allow them to give Jenny a proper funeral, which he grants sadly. Later, the Doctor concludes that, Jenny's creation was the reason the TARDIS had brought them to Messaline, they had just gotten there a little too soon. They then created Jenny, creating a unending paradox. He returns Martha home, and Donna resolves to stay with the Doctor while Martha leaves. Meanwhile, Jenny comes back to life as the Doctor had expected would happen if she was given enough time. She escapes Messaline in a shuttle and resolves to travel the universe, saving planets, rescuing civilizations, defeating creatures, and to do an awful lot of running just like her father.
There was a ridiculous amount of speculation about this story and most of it was wrong. The character of Jenny was NOT his long lost daughter. She was NOT the missing relative between The Doctor and Susan. I guessed some sort of cloning. I was surprised only by the fact that the cloning was an instant thing. I had imagined some kind of incident in his past coming home to roost. But ok, that was a good way of doing it. Instantly, The Doctor has a daughter – technically. The Doctor’s reaction to her is the main theme of the whole episode. He is disdainful of the idea that a clone created against his will could really be his blood relative and disgusted that she is so militant. Interestingly, this seems to throw that annoying book ‘Lungburrow’ in which cloning is the norm on Gallifrey out of the window – where it belongs. The Doctor is disgusted by the idea of creating life without effort. The scene in which The Doctor explains to Donna that he lost his family in the Time War and that his ambitions for that kind of life died with them is very good, grown up stuff that appeals to the adult viewers. It was played very well by David Tennant, with just the right amount of emotion. When you listen to what he actually says, it gives nothing away about what family he had lost. It sounds like he is saying a lot, but really he said nothing more than he did in the line ‘I was a dad once’ in Fear Her or the more emotive one about being a father and a grandfather from Empty Child. The slate is still blank as far as the TV Doctor is concerned. And that’s for the best, if only because it leaves fiction writers with nothing to worry about in the canon.
Jenny was cute, clever, very good at gymnastics, but I can’t say I really warmed to her. I think it was right that The Doctor did, though. His softening towards her was very well done at the right pace. One problem was that I didn’t really feel any great sense of grief when she was killed. I didn’t feel anything much when Peck drowned, either. As with the death of Ross and Luke last week, there didn’t seem to be a lot of time to take in the emotiveness of these deaths. I really think Doctor Who needs to be another five or ten minutes longer in order to make emotional issues less crowded out. That, or drop some less important sequences. Did they really need such a long goodbye scene for Martha? Usually I don’t mind those slow end scenes, but this one was a bit too slow.
And did we really need Jenny to be resurrected? Seriously, no, we don’t need another spin off featuring the cute blonde female Time Lord who can handle an automatic rifle. No, we really don’t. It is a tempting thought, but there is absolutely no justification for it. A possible reunion in one of those specials next year, possibly. But on the whole I think the story would have been better if she had died for real and left it at that. The war of the Humans and Hath that had lasted only seven days but countless generations of clones was a good idea. I think it worked very well. The Hath were nicely realised as a humanoid but far from human species.
Donna and Martha in their separate stories had good material this week. Martha communicating with the Hath who never actually spoke a word of English was fantastic and completely ignored by most of the overnight reviews. Her brief relationship with the Hath called Peck was delightful. Donna, working out the whole puzzle with the dates using her very Human supertemp skills to work out what The Doctor hadn’t was perfect. This is a good story, with just one or two niggles about the pace and the difficulty of putting over the emotional impact. I have no problem with technicalities some people have got hung up over, like how come Jenny came out of the cloning machine clothed and with her hair in a pony tail and eye make up on. Cloning machines clever enough to built a teenager in seconds can handle a bit of clothing and cosmetics, and that’s the end of that.
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