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Original Transmission
Cast The Doctor David Tennant
Crew Written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford
Electricians Ben Griffiths Jonathon Cox
Plot Outline from Wikipedia The TARDIS arrives on Mars and the Doctor steps out in his spacesuit, seemingly just to relax and enjoy the landscape. Stumbling across a base inhabited by a team from Earth, the Doctor is detained by a remote-controlled robot called "GADGET" and brought inside. The base commander, Adelaide Brooke, is at first suspicious of the Doctor, but after a tense interrogation, decides to trust him. The Doctor learns that the date is 21st November 2059, and that this is in fact Bowie Base One, the first human outpost on Mars. History has it that on this date the base was destroyed in a mysterious explosion and Brooke and her crew were all killed. Unwilling to break the laws of time and interfere with fixed points in history, the Doctor decides to leave. However, at the very same moment a crisis is developing: two crew-members, Andy Stone and Maggie Cain, have been infected by a mysterious life form which takes over their bodies and causes them to gush large amounts of water. Adelaide believes that the Doctor could be responsible for the infection in some way, and orders him to come with her and another crew-member, Tarak Ital, to investigate.
The infection spreads, with Andy passing on the condition to Tarak. The two men are contained in the base's "bio-sphere" section while Maggie is secured in the medical wing. In a conversation with colleague Yuri Kerenski, the organism occupying Maggie's body reveals its desire to reach Earth, a planet rich in water. The crew plan to evacuate in an escape shuttle, and the Doctor breaks the news to Adelaide that she must die today, on Mars, if events are to unfold as they should. However, he also tells her that her death will inspire her descendants to travel further into space and establish peaceful relations with numerous extraterrestrial species. Unwillingly, Adelaide lets him leave. As the Doctor is making his way back to the TARDIS, Maggie breaks out of confinement, infiltrates the shuttle and infects pilot Ed Gold, Adelaide's deputy. Before the condition takes a hold over him, Ed manages to trigger the shuttle's self-destruct mechanism, which traps the infection on Mars but also leaves the surviving crew with no means of escape. The destruction of the shuttle is witnessed by the Doctor who, overcome by defiance against time itself, returns to the base to save the others.
Realising that there is no way to change the course of history, Adelaide activates Bowie Base's self-destruct sequence. The infected personnel mount the roof of the control centre and exude more water, which pours into the room and claims GADGET's operator, Roman Groom, and Steffi Ehrlich. However, the Doctor uses GADGET to access the TARDIS, operate its controls remotely and transport the time and space machine into the base, rescuing Adelaide, Yuri and Mia Bennett from the resulting nuclear explosion.
The TARDIS materialises outside Adelaide's house on Earth. Mia and Yuri are shocked by their experiences on Mars and the Doctor's power and depart, bewildered. In a conversation with Adelaide, the Doctor reflects on why he ultimately decided to save her and the others. He argues that the laws of the Time Lords were only valid while their civilisation existed, and that since he is the last of his race he has total authority over time. He proudly declares himself the "Time Lord Victorious" and remarks that with this power he will now be able to save influential figures such as Adelaide as well as "little people" the likes of Yuri and Mia. Scolding the Doctor for his new-found arrogance, Adelaide returns home and commits suicide, meaning that the Doctor's efforts at changing the timeline are mostly undone, the only differences being the location of Adelaide's death and Yuri and Mia's survival.
Only now understanding the full impact of his actions, the Doctor is overcome with horror and realises that there will be a price to pay for his interference. Ood Sigma appears in the street, prompting the Doctor to ask him whether he has finally gone too far — whether the time has come for him to die. Unresponsive, Sigma vanishes, and the Doctor staggers back into the TARDIS to the ominous sound of the Cloister Bell. With a defiant "No!", he begins to work the machine's controls.
This was billed as the most scary Doctor Who ever. I’m not sure it was that. But in many ways it was the darkest – certainly since the hurt and grieving version of him that we saw in Christopher Eccleston’s incarnation. And he was a flawed Doctor. He made mistakes by the bucket load in this episode, proving that he really does need a friend to keep an eye on him. Donna said it way back in the Runaway Bride three Christmases ago. “You need somebody to stop you.” And this story proves it. Of course there is nothing remarkable about that. Russell is just fulfilling his own prophecy. But it is a hell of a way to do that.
Because the most glaring thing that comes out of this story is that The Doctor, unintentionally, but because of his own actions, caused a woman to commit suicide. And yes, people have made sacrifices before. Davros gleefully pointed out the likes of Astrid, the annoying but ultimately brave Luke Rattigan, the unnamed Stewardess, Harriet Jones. You could go back further and find Noah, the leader of the Nerva beacon project in Ark In Space, the second Tom Baker story, or even as far back as Dortmun, the cripple who faced the Daleks in a last ditch effort in the 1964 story Invasion of Earth.
But those people all died for a cause, a purpose, to save others. Adelaide Brook went into her house and turned a disintegrator ray on herself because she had spent a full day listening to The Doctor tell her how her death on the Bowie Base on Mars was the catalyst for so many wonderful things that would come to pass in the future. He laid it on so thick that there was nothing that could be done, that she had to die to preserve that future, that the events of 21st November 2059 were fixed and immutable, that she could not live with being rescued and killed herself so that the future he outlined would still happen.
And that is what happens when a Time Lord breaks the Laws of Time. Innocent people suffer. The Doctor’s shock when he discovers what his own actions have led to is acute. When he sees the vision of Ood Sigma silently standing in the snow he knows he has to face the consequences – and not just his own self-recriminations. Waters of Mars was only the start of a story with consequences to be reckoned in the last two stories of David Tennant’s tenure. Those of us who know that The Doctor’s story goes back before 2005 are thinking of what happened to the Second Doctor at the end of the War Games. Will the Eleventh Doctor be called to account for himself before the ghosts of his ancestors? We shall know soon enough.
Meanwhile, Waters of Mars was, quite aside from the moral issues, visually stunning. A quarry near Upper Boat made a pretty impressive Martian landscape once the film had been graded to make the south Wales sky look suitably alien. The model shots of Bowie Base looked good. They weren’t too futuristic. This was set in 2059. Fifty years into the future. What would people in that era think a habitat for the first Human colonists on another planet look like? I think they got it about right. If the DVD still exists in 2059, perhaps people will snigger about the clothes and hairstyles much as we do about Space 1999, which was the vision from the 1970s of what the twenty-first century would look like. Science fiction film makers are always guessing on that front. But Bowie Base, inside and out, looked about right.
Gadget! Did we really need him? Maybe. This was a sophisticated, grown up story. On some level there needed to be something for the kids. Gadget was it. And yes, I suppose there will be an action figure in the new year. It can sit with my K9 figure in my collection. He wasn’t around enough to be really annoying with the ‘gadget gadget’ catchphrase, and he WAS central to the plot since The Doctor used him to bring the TARDIS to them when they had only seconds to live. He served his purpose. The flood monsters were a triumph of prosthetics. The cracked mouths and creepy eyes were a great job. The effect of water pouring from their bodies was very effective. And they were very creepy.
Water is possibly second only to fire for a really scary threat to life. What are the most memorable disaster films ever, after all – Towering Inferno and Titanic? Water that turns people into zombies is a neat touch. And yes, the homage to 28 Days Later is fully acknowledged. When the poor Gadget controller looked up and got the drop of water in his eye it was obvious what they were all thinking of. But so what? Since we all knew what would happen, it meant we didn’t have to see that character change. We could take it as read. And besides, assuming Doctor Who is still watched by so many children, they shouldn’t have seen 28 Days Later. So it’s new to them. Waters of Mars didn’t have a lavish budget. But it had imagination and flair and a great guest cast, led by Lindsay Duncan in her portrayal of the stubborn, prickly, tartar of a grandmother in charge of Bowie Base. And it worked on every level it was expected to work on. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just being unnecessarily belligerent.
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