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Doctor Who - The Poison Sky
This episode picks up right where the last one left off, with the recap being the pre-title sequence. I will say I'm a little peeved seeing the phrase "and Freema Agyeman" and not just her name, they didn't do that to John Barrowman last year. What about when the Rose, Mickey, and Sara Jane episode comes later this year are they going to say, "and Billie Piper", "and Elisabeth Sladen" and and and?? I doubt it. But that's a tiny nit to pick here.
As many people speculated the resolution to the grand dying in the car was pretty obvious, except it was not Donna, but her Mum who threw the rock threw the window, or axe as it were. The whole ATMOS thing plays out very nicely and it seems to employ every single fog machine in the UK, as it belches out tons of poisonous gas all over the world. I will say using Evil Martha to steal secrets and codes didn't seem very Sontaran like, a little too much cloak and dagger for a race that prides it self on facing it's enemies. That aside, the episode starts with some excellent chaos and continues for the length of the show.
While the true plan of the Sontarans takes time to expose it self, we do get to see something odd, (besides the flash on the vid screen) we get to see Donna, actually flummoxed, and not knowing exactly what to do. When the Doctor sends her a message, she actually didn't know what to do with it at first, when simply hitting dial last number would have worked. I will say the whole sub-plot involving the geniuses is completely unnecessary. They should have just killed Rattigan off at the end of the last episode. And I'm getting a little tired of the clichéd use of news broadcasts to give exposition about the rest of the world. There's no reason why it should be done like this over, and over in every modern day episode. This could have been handled by people inside UNIT relaying the info, which for the most part is obvious and not really needed. The fancy TV style graphics is wearing thin on me. In particular the close-up shots of pixelatied mouths and the like.
At about the half way point we get to see the Sontaran force do battle with the UNIT troops, and since bullets cost real production money the UNIT boys don't really stand a chance against the Sontarans at first. But I will say I was pleased with the Sontaran weapons they looked very old school. Plus the single best line EVER is uttered by the Doctor himself when both he and the UNIT forces go on the offensive, complete with protective gear. It's such a brilliant call back, that it caught me completely off guard.
Overall the episode was an excellent conclusion to the Sontaran story line, even though the whole Sontaran plan was a tad weak, the pacing of the episode was very good. Again could have done without the Rattigan story line, and the Doctor's fear of a gun, which he certainly knew wouldn't work did bother me a bit. But all in all, quite satisfying.
Just my 2¢,
Kelvington
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May 3, 2008 4:44 PM
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