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“He saves planets, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures… and runs a lot. Seriously, there’s an outrageous amount of running involved.”

Exactly what the title says: through the process of progenation, the Doctor gets a spunky blonde daughter, who also happens to be a genetically-bred warrior. With a really cute smile. It’s Buffy the Time Girl.

Plot Points – Drawn to the planet Messaline by unknown forces, the Doctor, Donna, and Martha encounter the remnants of a human colony that are at war with alien fish-people called the Hath. The battle has been raging for generations, and new warriors are bred through a process that takes tissue samples and instantly bio-grows a new soldier, complete with all the military and tactical information they need. A sample from the Doctor produces a young woman (Georgia Moffett), whom Donna dubs Jenny. Meanwhile, Martha gets kidnapped by the Hath.

Doctor Who? – The Doctor admits to Donna (as he once did to Rose) that he was once a father, and tells her that “I look at [Jenny] now, and I can see them [his family, the Time Lords]. The hole they left, and the pain that filled it. When they died, that part of me died with them. It’ll never come back.” He carries a stethoscope and a little wind-up toy mouse on his person. They still have the Doctor’s old hand (which Jack had collected) in the TARDIS and it is “very excited” about their travelling to Messaline.

Hey, Hey, Donna  – She is good at numbers, and figures out the mystery of the numbered nameplates when the Doctor scarcely even notices. She also seems determined to make the Doctor bond with Jenny, even though he resists. She loves it when Jenny renders the Doctor speechless. There’s also another gag about the Doctor and Donna being a couple, and Donna—in a true punch-the-air moment—finally says out loud what everyone was thinking back in the Rose-luvs-the-Doctor days: “We’re not even the same species, there’s probably laws against it.”

Martha, My Dear - Poor Freema really is wasted in this story. Her whole encampment with the Hath accomplishes nothing, story-wise and even the possible “greater understanding between the species” concept is pretty much jettisoned when the Hath she’s bonded with dies. However, I do love her facial expressions when the Hath all gather round the pet her.

This Year’s Arc – Nothing direct, but who wants to bet Jenny will be showing up in the season finale somewhere?

Too Cool – The less said about the Hath the better, but I did like those guns that shoot a little jet of flame when they fire. I also liked the fact that—almost uniquely in this series—what the Hath are saying is neither “translated” into English, nor subtitled, even though Martha clearly can understand them.

Weird Science – The big reveal is that the war has been going on for only seven days, but if these people were really sent to colonize an alien planet, why would they still be using Earth time as a measurement? Relative time on Messaline will be determined by how fast the planet rotates and how fast it revolves around the sun. There doesn’t seem much point in stamping everything with Earth timecodes when they’re going to have to establish a whole new calendar for themselves.

Dumb Stuff –  I’ve been reading far too much About Time lately, so buckle up, this is going to be a long one. Let’s start with the bigg’un: the whole “the war has only been going for seven days” thing is a classic kind of literary science fiction conceit, but it simply isn’t buyable given the visual information we’re afforded here. A war so violent and all-consuming that thousands of soldiers are dying per day—so many that the subsequent “generations” have completely forgotten and/or modified many key elements of their heritage in just a week—would have to be so unrelenting and savage that little else would be going on. And yet, aside from one very brief skirmish at the beginning, we see no fighting, no battles, no offensives against the Hath except for the quest for The Source; in fact, what we see for the most part are troops milling around, polishing their weapons, and talking amongst themselves. Is there supposed to be a “front” somewhere where humans forces rage against Hath troops? If so, we’re given no concrete evidence of it, and no such thing is ever mentioned. Add to this the fact that it’s specifically stated that the Progenation machines shut down for the night, even further limiting the number of generations that can/have been produced (this line seems to have been inserted to explain why nobody tries to take a sample from Donna, even though they had ample time earlier). There’s also no indication that the humans and/or Hath have breached each other’s camps, so why are week-old structures looking so dilapidated and run-down? In fact, virtually every single surface we see looks old, grotty, and age-worn (not merely abandoned, as the Doctor says). This much wear and tear simply can’t be the result of a mere seven days of existence. We’re not told exactly how many human/Hath colonists arrived on the ship originally, but we could assume at least a dozen or so—is it really believable that all the originals are dead? No cowards, nobody who ran and hid rather than fighting? Were they all really such crappy soldiers that they died in the first twenty-four hours or so? This gag would work if the war had been going for six months or even three—hell, even one month and I’d just buy it. But a week is simply ludicrous. And why exactly does war break out between the Hath and the humans anyway? Just because the ship’s commander dies? Wasn’t there an assistant commander who would’ve taken charge, or some kind of command structure? Has there always been tension between humans and Hath? And if so, why are they being sent to colonize a planet together, and why isn’t it ever mentioned? Is it some sort of Botany Bay penal colony or something? This aspect of the story is seriously underdeveloped.

All right, on to other things: at the beginning of the episode, when the human soldiers arrives, there’s a disturbance, and one of them says, “It’s the Hath!” Well duh—who else would it be? They claim that the Doctor, Donna, and Martha all have “clean” hands, but the tissue sample is taken from the back of the hand, and the two ladies have their arms up, palms out when this comment is made—only the Doctor shows both sides of his hands. At the very beginning, when they arrive on the planet, the Doctor is wearing only his suit, and charges towards the door, but when he exits the TARDIS just a second later, he’s wearing his long brown coat (it’s conceivable that he grabs it on the way out, but the pace of the cutting leaves no time for him to have put it on). Why is Martha—compassionate, wonderful Martha—so quick to dismiss the idea that Jenny might regenerate (re-Jenny-rate, heh heh)? Okay, maybe she’s read the U.N.I.T. files on the Doctor, but unless the Jon Pertwee version gave them a full briefing on Time Lord physiology (unlikely, and never established in any previous episode) she can hardly be an expert. It’s a cliché (and, to a certain extent, just visual shorthand) that the Progenation machine not only downloads military info and such, but gives them a uniform and combat boots as well—but what exactly is the warrior advantage of heavy mascara and sexy eyeliner?

Classic Who – First and foremost, there’s Georgia Moffett, who plays Jenny—she’s the daughter of Peter Davison, who played the Fifth incarnation of the Doctor in the classic series (and who returned briefly for the charity episode “Time Crash”), while her mother is Sandra Dickinson, unforgettable as Trillian in the original BBC (television) series of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  It’s been mentioned in the new series that the Doctor has two hearts, but a bit odd how much the new series now expects the audience to take this information for granted. Donna asks, “What do you call a female Time Lord?” Fan-lore has generally said “Time Lady,” though I don’t recall the classic series every using those actual words.

Final Answer – Blecch. A drab, dreary episode with science so bad it should have been written by Russell T. Davies (it wasn’t; Stephen Greenhorn is to blame). The Hath are perhaps the worst-conceived alien species since the series returned, and the human characters are unsympathetic and dull. As for Jenny—well, Georgia Moffatt is adorable, and gives a sprightly performance, but her fate is so pre-ordained that she might as well have been issued a t-shirt marked “Dead Meat.” And yet—she still lives on, in a dumb coda that seems completely tacked-on in an effort to launch yet another spin-off series that reeks of Buffy. Jenny dying in the Doctor’s arms is almost exactly like the Master dying in the Doctor’s arms in “Last of the Time Lords,” and the whole paradox element—the TARDIS took them to the planet just so the Doctor could create Jenny—is idiotic beyond belief. I fully admit that it’s impossible to create any science fiction television that is absolutely water-tight, logic-wise, but “The Doctor’s Daughter” seem to positively revel in its stupidity. And unlike last year’s stinkers—the Dalek two-parter—it doesn’t even have any eye-candy going for it. There are a couple of nice moments, and Tennant proves (again) that he is far more effective when being quiet and pensive rather than making The Angry Face, but overall this is a washout. It might just take my personal prize for the worst episode of NuWho yet produced, but I dunno—“Fear Her” is still pretty darn bad. Just for fun, my macro review of the episode is here.

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