The first recording today starts with the end of The National Lottery People’s Quiz.
There’s a trail for programmes coming up.
There’s another trail for Rush Hour. And for My Family.
Then we come to the programme itself. Today’s first recording actually comes in three flavours in my collection as I’ve got three different copies of the same recording. One has everything before and after the recording removed, another has the beginning intact, but everything after the end of the programme removed, and the third… is a very odd thing, as it’s the main recording, but with a second recording of the same programme from a different time (a BBC Three repeat) tacked on to the end.
What programme would possibly have caused me to do such a thing? Of course it’s Doctor Who and the first episode of Series 3 – Smith and Jones. I imagine, given how glitchy TV Reception has been recently, I might have stitched two recordings together to try to edit a non-glitchy version. I checked and I do have three different MP4 files of this recording, but they all look like just the first broadcast. I might have been trying out different file formats. It’s a good thing I kept most of them as dvr-ms files, as used by Media Centre, so the metadata is preserved, otherwise this blog would be rather tricky to manage.
But enough of this trivia that’s interesting to exactly one person, let’s talk about Doctor Who.
We meet Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman, as she’s walking to work, fielding a lot of calls from her family. It’s her brother’s birthday party coming up, and her divorced dad is going to bring his new girlfriend, which will be a major embarrassment. We’ll meet the rest of the family as the show progresses.
As she finishes her calls, all of a sudden, and without any context, The Doctor walks up to her, takes off his tie, and says “Like so! You see?” then walks off.
Martha is a trainee doctor. She goes on rounds with her consultant, a rather pompous Roy Marsden.
One of their patients is Anne Reid, who eats too many salads, and so has a salt deficiency.
Another patient is… The Doctor. Under his regular pseudonym John Smith. Martha recognises him from earlier, but he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, as he’s been there all day. She also finds out that he has two hearts, but rather sensibly doesn’t mention that. And the Doctor cracks a joke about working with Benjamin Franklin.
At lunch, Martha is talking to her sister Tish, again, trying to avert a disastrous birthday party later that night.
She’s heading to the hospital and suggests meeting up, Martha doesn’t fancy going out in pouring rain, but there’s no rain where Tish is. And when she sees the hospital, she can see that it’s raining only over the hospital. And then the rain starts going up.
There’s a bright light, and what looks like an earthquake in the hospital, and when the light fades, it’s suddenly night. Martha looks out of the window and sees that suddenly they’re on the moon.
We get to see the hole left from the missing hospital, which is a nice touch. I love shots like this.
The Doctor has got dressed, and finds Martha, impressed by her thought processes analysing their situation. They go out on a balcony, and the Doctor works out that they’re in a force field, which is holding in all the air, although the danger now is that the air will run out. Martha knows it must be something alien, as she remembers all the other times aliens have come to Earth. She particularly remembers the Cybermen at Canary Wharf, as her cousin, Adeola, was there, and died there. This handily explains why Freema Agyeman was playing a different character in last series’ finale.
To confirm the alien hypothesis, here they come. I like this design of ship. Very industrial.
As the alien troops march towards the hospital, in his office, consultant Mr Stoker is visited by his patient, Miss Henderson, who, it turns out is not a harmless old lady, but is, in fact, a murderous alien disguised as a harmless old lady. And worse, she wants to suck his blood. She’s even brought her own straw. This was a delightfully horrible idea, perfect for Doctor Who. I can imagine a lot of kids in the playground pretending to suck each other’s blood with their straws at playtime. I know I would have. Incidentally, I presume this plot point is the reason Roy Marsden’s character is called Mr Stoker.
The aliens are the Judoon, an army of Space Rhinos, a mercenary police force. Another magnificent prosthetic creation from Neill Gorton and his team.
One person tries to fight back against them, and is summarily executed for his trouble.
The Judoon are searching for an alien. Martha goes to Stoker’s office and sees Miss Finnegan sucking his blood, so she runs back to the Doctor, and they are pursued by her henchman, looking like someone in a black motorcycle helmet. “Where’s he from, planet Zovirax” asks Martha. They hide in the X-Ray room. The Doctor ramps up the power output to the X-Ray machine to kill the henchman.
After sucking all Stoker’s blood, Miss Finnegan is happy to be scanned by the Judoon, as she can now pass as human.
The Doctor realises Finnegan’s plan, and needs Martha to delay the Judoon to give him a chance to find Finnegan, so he kisses her to leave traces of Alien DNA on her. It’s a very shallow excuse, both by the Doctor and the writer.
The Doctor finds Finnegan, who’s modifying the MRI machine. The Doctor gets to pretend he doesn’t know anything. He tells her that the Judoon are increasing their scan level, so she decides she needs to assimilate more human blood, which she then takes from the Doctor.
Martha comes in, shocked that the Doctor is dead, and tells the Judoon that Finnegan killed him. The Judoon don’t care about human crimes, and Miss Finnegan shows off her “Not an alien” handstamp to prove her status. Martha realises the implications of Finnegan drinking his blood, so she grabs a scanner from the Judoon and scans Miss Finnegan, which now shows that she’s alien.
She runs to switch on the sabotaged MRI machine, before the Judoon execute her. “Enjoy your victory, Judoon. Cos you’re going to burn with me! Burn in hell!”
The Judoon leave, wanting to escape before the MRI overloads. Martha gives the Doctor CPR and eventually gets him breathing again, while she collapses from lack of oxygen.
The Doctor shuts down the MRI, and takes Martha’s unconscious body to the windows, hoping that the Judoon’s scoop that brought them to the moon would now reverse itself. He knows it’s working when rain starts. “It’s raining, Martha. It’s raining on the moon.”
Outside the hospital, there’s a lot of commotion. Martha finds her sister Tish there.
She notices the Doctor walking towards the Tardis, but doesn’t see it disappear.
That night, It’s the party for Martha’s brother Leo (played by Reggie Yates) and things do kick off.
Martha’s mum Francine (Adjoa Andoh) insulted Annalise, her husband’s new girlfriend. He’s played by Trevor Laird. He tries to smooth it over. “She didn’t mean it, she just said you look healthy.” “No, I said orange!”
Annalise (Kimmi Richards) even called Martha a liar for saying she’d been on the moon. “As if. They were drugged, it said so on the news!” “Since when did you watch the news? You can’t handle Quizmania!”
As the argument continues, Martha sees the Doctor standing at the corner, and goes to follow him to where the Tardis is waiting.
There’s a Vote Saxon poster in the background (and there was a mention of Mr Saxon in some background dialogue earlier).
The Doctor offers Martha a trip in the Tardis. When he says it travels in time, she doesn’t believe him, so he goes in, the Tardis disappears, then moments later reappears, and the Doctor emerges now carrying his tie, the one he took off in front of her first thing in the morning.
Martha enters the Tardis for the first time. I love a “New to the Tardis” scene, and this is a lovely one. She points out the Tardis is made of wood.
Media Centre Description: When Martha Jones finds herself on the moon, she meets a mysterious stranger called the Doctor, and her life will never be the same again.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Saturday 31st March 2007 18:58
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Saturday 31st March 2007 19:00
The next recording is straight after the last one, but on BBC Three, and it’s Doctor Who Confidential – Meet Martha Jones. This is a bumper length episode.
It opens with the star studded premiere of the first two episode of the series, and boy are there a lot of famous faces there.
There’s Tracy-Ann Oberman, obviously hot-foot from the Weakest Link studio.
Dawn French and Sophia Miles.
Celia Imrie. It’s nice to see so many of the guests are bringing their children, too.
Even the crew are on the red carpet. I spotted prosthetics whiz Neill Gorton.
Phil Collinson and Russell T Davies.
David and Carrie Grant off of Fame Academy.
Russell is looking delighted at the whole thing.
Mark Gatiss
Jonathan Ross has also brought his children.
RTD gets a hug from Steven Moffat
Lizo Mzimba doing interviews.
Catherine Tate joins Dawn French and Sophia Miles
Back to the more traditional talking heads interviews as we discuss the new companion. David Tennant: “Really we’re following Martha’s story and that’s… I think that’s how the show has always worked, really. It’s the point of view of the human character that allows the audience in.”
Phil Collinson on the Tardis set. “We have a successful show on our hands and we want to keep it that way.”
Julie Gardner: “Every year at this time, you start to feel the weight of expectation.”
Freema’s first caption.
Director Charles Palmer is the son of actor Geoffrey Palmer.
Always nice to see Danny Hargreaves, even if he’s not blowing something up this week, just putting floor hinges on a door so it falls properly when bashed down.
Casting director Andy Pryor talks about casting Freema. “With the casting of Martha, it was very much Russell had the seed of an idea about the character in his head. We wanted somebody who was experienced, but relatively unknown.”
A new face to the programme is Heat magazine’s Boyd Hilton.
Also new, is Caitlin Moran. I met her recently, in the green room at a Douglas Adams-focused event. She was very complimentary about my wife’s sparkly jacket.
Have we seen Paul Morley on this show before? It feels like this series, it’s finally crossed over from unexpected cult hit to universally admired television treasure.
Kimmi Richards is joking that the rest of the cast won’t sit with her. “They hate me, that’s why I’m over here on my own!”
Adjoa Andoh explains her character dynamic in the scene. “I’ve come to my son’s 21st birthday, it’s a family occasion, and he brings the blonde child with him. She’s not part of the family, I don’t know why she’s here. So I’m cross.”
Reggie Yates is just enjoying his party.
Trevor Laird explains that it’s his character who bears the responsibility. “Why blame the young girl?”
Murray Gold talks about the new themes for this series.
Neill Gorton talks about the Judoon.
Paul Kasey is still there, performing under the monster costumes.
Gustav Hoegen, here explaining all the lip movements the Judoon animatronics can do.
Nick Briggs is on hand to do the voices.
Back to the Premiere, and more celeb fans, like Adam Woodyatt.
Jo Whiley had to leave the screening because it was too intense for her young son. “He’s gonna be so upset that he was asleep.”
My usual source for episodes has come up rather short for Series 3, but luckily, because it’s the 60th anniversary, all the episodes are on iPlayer, so here’s a link for this episode. Click the image below.
Media Centre Description: Behind-the-scenes look at Doctor Who. The Doctor has a new companion, Martha Jones. By sheer courage and determination, she has wowed the Time Lord and been offered a place on board the TARDIS. Featuring exclusive footage from the new series and interviews with Freema Agyeman, who plays Martha, David Tennant and head writer Russell T Davies, the programme examines the development of Martha’s character and the huge interest behind the casting of the new companion.
Recorded from BBC THREE on Saturday 31st March 2007 19:43
BBC Genome: BBC THREE Saturday 31st March 2007 19:45
VHiStory 