DW 4.5: The Poison Sky - They Mentioned The Brigadier!

The Poison Sky

Fantastic!

There’s not much else to say really, but for the sake of those unlucky enough to stumble on to this blog, or kind enough to follow the Facebook link I will elaborate. Between the age of 3 and 12, Saturday night television was a very special place to be. Basil Brush, Jim’ll Fix It and of course Doctor Who. Being a teenager in the 1980’s was pants (there were several dents there), but that was a small price to pay for escaping every week into the Doctor Who universe during the mid to late seventies. I always thought I’d never recapture those moments sat on the floor in front of the telly, gawping up at the screen. Yes, gawping – usually in wonder, sometimes because I really needed the loo or more than likely because I couldn’t break away from the sight of the last of the Jagaroth or from a stone hand that was hurting my fantasy big sister, Sarah Jane Smith.

Experiences like that tend to disappear when you have to pay your first council tax bill, or when you begin to see the sense in filing away every bank statement that comes through your door. Television certainly appears to lose its magic when you receive your first demand for the TV licence – we demand that programmes on the BBC prove themselves on a daily basis. TV becomes routine, not a treat. It takes something very special to send you back to that moment of plenitude (and I’m not talking tittie sucking here fellas). However, on Saturday 3^rd May, 2008 I was pretty much sent back to the 70s and I didn’t even have to put Jeff Wayne on the stereo. It was all because of that one programme that refused to give up on the fans and the child within all of us. The Tomorrow People… no, wait a minute, that’s not right. Where was I?

The Poison Sky was the Saturday Night TV experience. Action, adventure, energy, explosions and the Doctor! From the moment Donna’s Mum grabbed that axe, to the TARDIS being hurled out of control towards another wacky adventure, for forty odd I was taken on a fun filled, action packed, (other cliché please), ride. We had Sontarans in force, we had the sky ignite in glorious, that’s-worth-the-licence-fee-alone-technicolour, we had Tennant being brilliant, we had the most perfect Empty Child reference ever and we had word that not only was the Brigadier alive, but active in Peru!

I was back on the floor that I’d occupied as a five-year old, cross-legged, hoping that I could make it until the end of the episode before nature made it’s call irrespective of my telly habits. I was a child again, enjoying Saturday night TV. I had fallen in love with Doctor Who all over again. Damn that RTD – he keeps springing this on us. When all hope seems to be lost, we get a two-part classic, a third-way into the fourth season. How will this be topped? Daleks, Davros, a cross over with Sapphire and Steel? What’s more it was written by the same woman who pissed all over the Daleks to such an extent I don’t really want to see them again for some time.

David Tennant confounded expectations again as the Doctor. After the last few performances he seems to have finally nailed it. It’s only taken him (or the writers/directors) two and a half seasons to get it right, but right he was. His was a Doctor you could finally start to love rather than to get annoyed by. It all seems that he’s leaving it all a little too late though, that he is going to leave us on a high note – that song is almost over remember, or so the Ood have led us to believe. Maybe that’s the poetry of it though. If he was as useless as he was with Rose, we’d be baying for his blood. Good job he’s finishing on a Bohemian Rhapsody rather than a Fat Bottomed Girls (ironic given Catherine Tate’s ample proportions). And let’s face it, Tennant will be gone by the end of this season – in some form another. I wager we’ll see two Doctors for the Christmas special. Rose is here to warn the Doctor that his parallel self is alive and well and living in London… sorry that was Dracula wasn’t i? Ok then, looking like David Morrisey, but hey what do I know?

It’s difficult to write a measured review of this episode. I just want to make one word statements. Brilliant. Fun. Cool. Sontar-ha! Perfection. Blah, blah, blah. Anyone would think I was in this one – and I’m not. I just had a whale of a time watching it. For all the blarney we keep hearing that US television really is the must see experience, you can shove it all. Doctor Who, in 42 minutes made TV actually matter. It cheered me up, it thrilled and it made me feel like a kid again. And this from someone who doesn’t particularly dig the Sontarans. To be honest though, it could have been any classic monster, it wouldn’t have mattered that much, although then we would have lost that genuinely classic moment of seeing Donna giving one in “the back of the neck” to the Weebles. Now anyone who doesn’t’ think Catherine Tate is perfect in the role of the companion now needs to stop watching Doctor Who and stick to Doctors. It’s the closest we’ve ever come to Sarah Jane Smith without actually having to resurrect Sarah Jane Smith.

I really can’t wait for next week’s episode. It will probably be dreadful – it looked pretty pants in the preview. Very 42 meets Satan Pit meets Buffy via Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t - because RTD, for all your duff ones, missed opportunities and Slitheen, you are responsible for The Poison Sky, and for Blink, and Human Nature, The Empty Child, Dalek, Father’s Day, Parting of the Ways and The Fires of Pompeii. Like Martha in The Sontaran Stratagem, you brought the Doctor back. You made him brilliant and you made us remember what fun we had as children. Hat’s off to you.