photo: bbc america
The Waters of Mars
Original Air Date: Dec 19, 2009
Brittany Frederick – Staff Writer
brittanyfrederick
@thetwocentscorp.com
Do not adjust your TV set. Doctor Who really is back in a burst of TV static, as the TARDIS lands on Mars, circa 2059, for his next big adventure. He’s about to run into the crew of a research facility, who would like to know what the heck he thinks he’s doing. He really just wants to have fun. Honest.
While he’s being interrogated by Adelaide (Lindsay Duncan), some of her fellow space travelers are working on their garden. This would be fine and boring if the water didn’t contain some sort of weird alien thing that turns Andy into a psychopath. It doesn’t help when the Doctor recognizes them all and the Wikipedia articles that are pulled up on them (in his head we presume) show that they’re all going to die in 2059. It seems this is the day the base is destroyed. The Doctor is ready to just run far, far away, except for that he spends more time talking about it than doing anything and gets dragged along. Isn’t that how it always goes?
Faster than you can say ‘Time And Relative Dimensions In Space,’ the water plague is spreading throughout the crew in a series of horror movie-like setpieces. The one guy infects the token black girl who infects the medic who rescues her. Etc. Etc. They all turn into creepy looking facially deformed people who spew water all over the place, and start overacting something major. The Doctor is convinced that he’d be screwing up time if he intervened, so he’s not looking to get involved, but as if he has a choice.
The Mars team deduces that the virus may have been frozen in the glacier from which they’ve been getting their water, and when they melted it, they released it. The Doctor helpfully adds that the virus doesn’t just hide in water but it creates water of its own. In other words, it’s going to be very difficult to avoid. Adelaide decides that they have no choice but to evacuate the base and return to Earth, but The Doctor reminds her that any of them could already be infected and would therefore take the infection to Earth. Plus the quarantined people are escaping. ESCAPE PLAN FAIL.
As they run away, The Doctor explains to Adelaide that he believes this whole crisis must happen to preserve time, and is reluctant to mess with it. We don’t mess with time, kids. Haven’t you seen that episode of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror where Homer goes back in time? Yeah, that. Anyway, a reference gets made to “The Stolen Earth” and Adelaide being just a baby during the Season Four ender, when her dad went off to find her mom and neither of them came back. Nice bit of continuity and random character development there. The Doctor uses that story to explain that Adelaide’s apparent sacrifice will pave the way for her granddaughter and subsequent generations to be inspired to do even better. Nice consolation prize. Not.
The team proceeds with their Doomed Escape Plan while David Tennant looks Really, Really Contemplative In A Bad Way. This is because the two infected guys are on the roof and they’re pissed. In massive slo-mo designed to kill time, The Doctor realizes all these people are about to be killed and it’s going to suck something major. He’s figured out what happens: Adelaide will be left with no choice but to blow up the base and everyone on it. She implores him for his help to avert this, but he refuses, saying her death is a fixed point in time (not unlike a certain Captain Jack Harkness?).
Everything goes to hell in a bunch of screaming and sobbing about thirty seconds later. Systematically, one by one, members of the crew fall victim to the spreading infection. The base’s auto-destruct is activated, pieces of it explode, and everyone gets to die a presumably slow and painful death. At least until The Doctor comes charging back in to save the day. In a manic rush, he starts explaining how all the stuff he explained before is wrong, because he’s the Last of the Time Lords and he can do whatever the hell he wants. David Tennant as a Doctor unleashed is an amazing thing to behold, and I wonder how no one’s ever asked him if he was on something. He’s so wound up that it reminds me of patients on Celebrity Rehab.
He sends the base’s little rover robot to the TARDIS, which he summons just before the auto-destruct blows everything up in a big fireball. The TARDIS – with the three surviving crewmembers aboard – lands in front of Adelaide’s house on Earth. Everyone has a moment of “What the deuce?” Adelaide is suddenly all pissed about not being dead. There’s just no making this woman happy. The Doctor doesn’t really care, because he realizes he’s on top of the universe, and leaves her there. Her response to this is to go into her house and shoot herself, therefore preserving the timeline.
The Waters of Mars is the Doctor Who version of one of those sci-fi plague stories that we’ve seen done a few dozen times on various shows and films over the years. It’s not a particularly inventive story, and the usage of slow-motion to kill time really gets grating over the last half-hour. What it does show us is what’s been hinted at before over the previous four seasons: without a companion to keep him balanced, The Doctor really can go quite a bit unhinged. He needs someone at his side for perspective and for balance. David Tennant plays it perfectly, ending with the chilling revelation that maybe it is time for him to go. Which we all know is coming quite soon…only one more two-part special to go.
I’m hoping The End of Time is a stronger narrative than The Waters of Mars, which seemed just like a bridge to get us to Tennant’s last adventure. I can only imagine it will, considering that John Simm is coming back as The Master. But on its own, outside of Tennant’s continually animated performance, it’s not something I would say I need to watch again.
What do you think? How did the Doctor’s second-to-last adventure sit with you?
TheTwoCents 
David Tennant was amazing in this episode!!! I think Waters of Mars is definitely a return to form after the ridiculousness that was “The Next Doctor” and “Planet of the Dead.”
And I agree with you, it felt somehow rushed at the end just to bring home that whole “Time Lord Victorious” theme, just because we know the Doctor is marching towards his death.
Tennant’s performance was absolutely the high of this episode. He really did give it everything he had, especially when he started to come unhinged. I can take or leave the rest of the episode, but he definitely deserves high marks for the effort he’s put into this episode (and his entire tenure).
I thought David was brilliant, but I had a strong sense of him channelling the Master with the “Time Lord Victorious” comments, not to mention the throwaway mention of the little people not being worth saving. The episode was okay, but it isn’t one to rewatch.
Ditto, Lizabeth. My thoughts exactly. I’ll probably own it for the sake of completing my collection but I don’t see myself rewatching it all that often.