Saturday, October 27, 2018

Doctor Who on Mars (3 episodes) (BBC Wales, 2009, 2013, 2017)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2018 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night’s Mars movie night in Golden Hill (http://marsmovieguide.com/) consisted of three episodes of Doctor Who — the 21st century incarnation, which has considerably better special effects than the originals and are in color but are also nowhere near as much fun — that had some sort of Mars theme. It’s obvious that the Doctor Who writers are looking around to other science-fiction movies for plot inspirations, since the first episode on the program, “The Waters of Mars” from 2009, is a pretty close ripoff of the original Alien. Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) is leading the first attempt by Earthlings to colonize Mars when the Doctor (David Tennant) arrives just one day before the history books recall that she and the entire Earth colony on Mars were killed in a nuclear accident. It turns out that as a result of Martian water contaminating the hydroponic dome in which the Earthlings were trying to grow normal human food, the food has become toxic and anyone who eats it, or drinks the Martian water directly (writers Russell Davies and Phil Ford came up with this script well before the recent discovery that there is frozen water under the surface of Mars, which makes their script seem prescient!), becomes infected with a Martian disease that causes their body to spurt water uncontrollably. Eventually Adelaide makes the tough decision to set off the nuclear self-destruct mechanism and destroy the colony, which means killing herself and everyone else, in order to protect the population back on Earth from being infected by the Martian whatsit — which is how I read the ending of Alien (Sigourney Weaver’s character consigned herself to certain death to keep Earth from being infested with the killer aliens) and why I was so disappointed when they not only made Alien sequels but resorted to an increasingly outrageous series of plot conceits to allow her to appear in them. Only the Doctor arrogantly insists that he’s going to rescue Adelaide and one other crew member and take them back to Earth, thereby changing the timeline and preventing Adelaide’s granddaughter from being inspired by her late grandmom’s example to become an astronaut herself and pilot the first spacecraft capable of faster-than-light travel. Adelaide frustrates the Doctor by vaporizing herself with a ray pistol or whatever the weapon she had on Mars, and so the only thing that changes in the timeline is the last paragraph of her obituary, from stating that she died on Mars to she died on Earth. 

The other two episodes, “Cold War” from 2013 and “Empress of Mars” from 2017, introduced one of the sillier menaces ever on Doctor Who episodes: the Martian Ice Warriors, a sort of Viking-like caste (they’re even compared in the script to the dramatis personae of the 1958 film The Vikings, the action potboiler Kirk Douglas had to sign on to in order to get to make Paths of Glory) who have a way of turning up on Earth. “Cold War” is sort of The Hunt for Red October meets The Thing, as it’s the 1980’s and a Soviet submarine is working under the Arctic to drill for oil and the Martian ice warrior decides to commandeer it and use its nuclear missiles to obliterate all life on Earth in revenge for one of the sub’s crew members tasing it. “Empress of Mars” was even sillier — though the actor playing the Doctor, Peter Capaldi, was quite the best of the three (the others were David Tennant and Matt Smith) represented here, mainly because he was older than the others and thereby brought the proper gravitas to the role. Its conceit is that in 1883 Martians came to earth and kidnapped a garrison of British soldiers who have become obsessed with the idea of turning the tables on their captors, conquering Mars and adding it to the British Empire. I was unimpressed by these shows, especially the last two, and I’m afraid that I respect but really don’t admire and will never be part of the cult that has formed around them — and as tacky as the original Doctor Who shows were, they also have an endearing charm that the later, more elaborately produced and effects-ridden incarnation doesn’t.