Head Writer and Executive Producer: Russell T. Davies
Cast: David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Bernard Cribbins, Jacqueline King
Season 4 of Doctor Who builds up on the success of the previos season and it offers some of the best episodes of the new Doctor Who series.The replacement of Martha Jones with Donna as a companion is particularly welcome as it makes the show even more lively and fun and Donna's character serves as a balance to Tennant's rather serious Doctor. The return of many characters from the previous 3 series to the finale is particularly welcome as it provides a spectacular end to a spectacular season that once again demonstrates David Tennant's incredible success as the Tenth Doctor.
Image taken from Amazon.co.uk
Cast: David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Bernard Cribbins, Jacqueline King
Season 4 of Doctor Who continues the adventures of the Tenth Doctor played by David Tennant. The Doctor gets a new companion for this season - the temp worker Donna Noble from Chiswick who is rather outspoken but has a rather limited view of the world and is radically transformed by her adventures with the Doctor. Donna is played by British comedian Catherine Tate, who manages to create a memorable character that evolves from a narrow-minded person into a brave and sensitive woman. Donna's character was first introduced in the finale of Season 3 and she is further developed in the Christmas special The Runaway Bride, which aired after Season 2 of Doctor Who. However, she becomes a companion of the Doctor only in the first episode of Season 4 and she brings a breath of fresh air to the show as, unlike Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, she does not harbour any romantic feelings for the Doctor and consider him just a mate. In fact, the relationship between the Doctor and Donna is one of the best features of this season and there are a number of episode which demonstrate how the two friends make each other better.
Season 4 begins with the rather unimpressive episode Partners in Crime in which the Doctor and Donna are conducting separate investigations of Adipose Industries, a company which promises people that it can easily help them get rid of their fat. However, the way in which this happens is shrouded in mystery and the Doctor and Donna both seek to uncover the secret of the company's success. The episode shows us that Donna has become dissatisfied with her life and wishes more adventures like the one she had with the Doctor. However, the episode's villain is rather disappointing although the excellent chemistry between Tennant and Tate, as well as the loveable character of Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins), that saves it from mediocrity. The Unicorn and the Wasp, which features the famous detective novelist Agatha Christie, is another offering that, in my opinion, does not really stand out against the rest of the episodes in this season. This episode includes a murder mystery in which the Doctor, Donna and Agatha Christie are forced to work together in order to discover the identity of the criminal. Although I found this episode entertaining enough, it's not one of my favourite and I would personally watch any other of the season's episodes than this one, with the exception of Partners in Crime.
However, Season 4 also features some of the best episode of the new Doctor Who series. It includes Steven Moffat's second two-parter written for Doctor Who, consisting of Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, which introduces the mysterious Vashta Nerada as well as the character of Professor River Song (Alex Kingston), archaeologist, who will play a key role in the Doctor's future. The episode takes place in the greatest library in the universe and it reveals much about the Doctor and about his new companion whose emotional sensitivity is used to great effect in this story. This two-parter is followed by one of the best standalone episodes of Doctor Who, Midnight, in which the Doctor Who is trapped on a shuttle on the planet Midnight with a number of passengers and a mysterious and dangerous creature. This is one of the scariest Doctor Who stories and it features the famous lines from Christina Rosetti's poem Goblin Market:
"We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
Whereas Donna plays a very small role in Midnight, in the next episode Turn Left it is the Doctor himself who takes the backseat. In this story Donna encounters a fortune teller on a mysterious planet and is somehow sent back to the past at a moment in which makes a crucial decision which determines whether she will ever meet the Doctor. This is an excellent episode that also features Rose Tyler who warns Donna that the universe in danger by asking her to deliver the message "Bad Wolf" to the Doctor. In the two-parter finale, consisting of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, the Doctor and Donna investigate the disappearance of a number of planets, including the Earth. These two episodes feature the return of many characters from the previous season, including Jack Harkness, Martha Jones and Mickie Smith. They offer a truly epic adventure in which the Doctor is once again forced to confront his greatest enemies but is now almost powerless before them.
Season 4 also features a number of very good episode. In The Fires of Pompeii Donna goes on her first adventure with the Doctor, which takes them to the city of Pompeii shortly before the eruption of the volcano that buried it in volcanic ash around 2000 years ago. This is an interesting episode as it shows how Donna changes the Doctor as she pleads with him to save at least some of the city's residents, despite the fact that he insists that Pompeii is a fixed point in time. The story also features an interesting enemy for the Doctor and this storyline effetively complements the Doctor's struggle with his decision not to save any of Pompeii's citizens. This episode is followed by Planet of the Ood in which the Doctor and Donna discover more about the slave race of the Ood. This is an episode in which the Doctor and Donna's don't exactly do much but it gives us some interesting background to the Ood who I personally find fascinating.
The following two-parter, consisting of The Sontaran Staratagem and The Poison Sky, introduces us to another enemy of the Doctor, the warrior Sontarans, who seek to conquer the Earth with the help of a human genius. The episode also features the return of Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT (Unified Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation under the UN that seeks to counter enemy threats. This is another fun episode that is made very exciting by the presence of Martha Jones. It is followed by the story of The Doctor's Daughter in which Donna, the Doctor and Martha finds themselves transported to an alien planet on which another person is created from the Doctor's DNA - the eponymous Doctor's daughter. This episode features a long-lasting conflict between two species which uses progenation machines to create more soldiers for their battles. However, all is not as it seems and the Doctor, Donna and Martha eventually make a startling discovery about the origins of this vicious conflict.
"We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
Whereas Donna plays a very small role in Midnight, in the next episode Turn Left it is the Doctor himself who takes the backseat. In this story Donna encounters a fortune teller on a mysterious planet and is somehow sent back to the past at a moment in which makes a crucial decision which determines whether she will ever meet the Doctor. This is an excellent episode that also features Rose Tyler who warns Donna that the universe in danger by asking her to deliver the message "Bad Wolf" to the Doctor. In the two-parter finale, consisting of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, the Doctor and Donna investigate the disappearance of a number of planets, including the Earth. These two episodes feature the return of many characters from the previous season, including Jack Harkness, Martha Jones and Mickie Smith. They offer a truly epic adventure in which the Doctor is once again forced to confront his greatest enemies but is now almost powerless before them.
Season 4 also features a number of very good episode. In The Fires of Pompeii Donna goes on her first adventure with the Doctor, which takes them to the city of Pompeii shortly before the eruption of the volcano that buried it in volcanic ash around 2000 years ago. This is an interesting episode as it shows how Donna changes the Doctor as she pleads with him to save at least some of the city's residents, despite the fact that he insists that Pompeii is a fixed point in time. The story also features an interesting enemy for the Doctor and this storyline effetively complements the Doctor's struggle with his decision not to save any of Pompeii's citizens. This episode is followed by Planet of the Ood in which the Doctor and Donna discover more about the slave race of the Ood. This is an episode in which the Doctor and Donna's don't exactly do much but it gives us some interesting background to the Ood who I personally find fascinating.
The following two-parter, consisting of The Sontaran Staratagem and The Poison Sky, introduces us to another enemy of the Doctor, the warrior Sontarans, who seek to conquer the Earth with the help of a human genius. The episode also features the return of Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT (Unified Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation under the UN that seeks to counter enemy threats. This is another fun episode that is made very exciting by the presence of Martha Jones. It is followed by the story of The Doctor's Daughter in which Donna, the Doctor and Martha finds themselves transported to an alien planet on which another person is created from the Doctor's DNA - the eponymous Doctor's daughter. This episode features a long-lasting conflict between two species which uses progenation machines to create more soldiers for their battles. However, all is not as it seems and the Doctor, Donna and Martha eventually make a startling discovery about the origins of this vicious conflict.
Season 4 of Doctor Who builds up on the success of the previos season and it offers some of the best episodes of the new Doctor Who series.The replacement of Martha Jones with Donna as a companion is particularly welcome as it makes the show even more lively and fun and Donna's character serves as a balance to Tennant's rather serious Doctor. The return of many characters from the previous 3 series to the finale is particularly welcome as it provides a spectacular end to a spectacular season that once again demonstrates David Tennant's incredible success as the Tenth Doctor.
Image taken from Amazon.co.uk
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