The Doctor's Daughter

197 – "The Doctor's Daughter"
Doctor Who episode
File:The Doctor's Daughter.jpg Jenny, the Doctor's daughter, is born.
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Companion Catherine Tate (Donna Noble)
Others Georgia Moffett – Jenny Nigel Terry – Cobb Joe Dempsie – Cline Paul Kasey - Hath Peck Ruari Mears - Hath Gable Akin Gazi - Carter Olalekan Lawal Jr – Soldier
Production
Directed by	Alice Troughton
Written by	Stephen Greenhorn
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	4.6
Series	Series 4
Running time	45 mins
First broadcast	10 May 2008
Chronology
← Preceded by "The Poison Sky" Followed by → "The Unicorn and the Wasp"

"The Doctor's Daughter" is the sixth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 10 May 2008. This episode marks the end of Freema Agyeman's second tenure playing the regular character companion Martha Jones who leaves the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) for a second time.

Plot

Following on from "The Poison Sky", the TARDIS takes the Doctor, Donna and Martha to the planet Messaline, where armed men working for General Cobb (Nigel Terry) seize the Doctor and stick his hand in a cloning machine, which uses his diploid cells to produce the titular character, Jenny. She is "born" an adult soldier trained to fight against the Hath — militaristic, fish-based creatures who communicate through bubbles. During a battle with the Hath, the Doctor and Donna are separated from both Martha and the TARDIS.

Martha befriends the Hath, who do not speak in any understandable fashion, while the Doctor and Donna learn about the history of the planet from the humans. The two races were initially meant to live in peace in a colony, but have long been at war, which the humans claim the Hath started. Donna notices a recurring series of plaques with eight-digit codes on them. While examining a electronic map terminal of the structure, the Doctor reveals a secondary set of blueprints leading to a structure the humans refer to as the temple of "the Source", the breath of their goddess. Believing this to be a weapon, Cobb intends to use it to wipe out the Hath, and has the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny locked up when the Doctor protests. The Doctor's actions have likewise altered the Hath's map terminal, and they too set out to find the Source.

While the Doctor is initially dismissive of his so-called daughter, Donna uses a stethoscope to confirm that Jenny has two hearts, and the Doctor comes to see many of his traits in her. Jenny, for her part, is puzzled by the Doctor's insistence that he isn't a soldier, despite his obvious aptitude for it. He explains that he was a soldier once, in a much greater war, and warns Jenny that once she starts killing it'll become addictive. Jenny distracts the guard and springs the trio from their prison cell. The Doctor, Donna and Jenny set out to beat the humans to the Source, while Martha opts to take the surface route with a Hath she has befriended. She manages to reach the temple first, but her Hath friend dies when he saves her from some quicksand.

The Doctor's party reaches the temple shortly after and the two sides join once more. The Doctor discovers that the temple is in fact a colony ship. Donna, while studying a number display matching the plaques, realises that they are a dating system, and according to the display, it's only been a week since the war started. The logs indicate the commander died and the resulting power vacuum started the war. Because the cloning machines produce new soldiers so quickly, they ran through dozens of generations in only a week, degrading their history to mere myth in a relative instant. They move further into the ship, where they find a terraforming agent, the Source, ready to be released.

The two camps converge on the Doctor's party, where he explains to them what has happened. He releases the terraforming agent and all but Cobb drop their weapons; Cobb instead tries to shoot the Doctor. Jenny steps into his path and is shot in one of her hearts. Jenny apparently dies in the Doctor's arms. The Doctor holds Cobb at gunpoint but does not pull the trigger, saying, "I never would", and tells both sides to make that the basis of their society. The new colony offers to bury Jenny as a start.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor concludes that the entire event was a ontological paradox; the TARDIS sensed Jenny but arrived too early, allowing her to be born in the first place. He returns Martha home, and Donna resolves to stay with the Doctor while Martha leaves. Meanwhile, Jenny revives in front of Cline and a Hath, after exhaling a coloured gaseous substance. She escapes Messaline in a spaceship while resolving to fight villains, inspired by her father.

Continuity

In "Fear Her" the Doctor mentioned to Rose he "was a dad once". The only other member of the Doctor's family seen in the series has been Susan Foreman, the Doctor's granddaughter, whose last appearance in the television series was in The Five Doctors.

Donna compares the TARDIS to a sports car (in comparison to a people carrier), as the Doctor did in "Utopia". Donna had previously called the TARDIS a 'box'.

Just prior to Jenny's reanimation she exhales a golden-green mist reminiscent of similar expirations the Doctor displayed shortly after his regeneration in the 2005 Children in Need scene and "The Christmas Invasion"; this mist also resembles the terraforming gas seen earlier in the episode.

Jenny's apparent death and revival closely mirrors The 7th Doctor's regeneration into the 8th Doctor. Both Jenny and the 7th Doctor were shot. Both appeared to be dead. Both were taken to some kind of mausoleum. Jenny and the Doctor were both shown exhaling a mist at the very start of the revival process.

Cast notes

Georgia Moffett, who plays Jenny, is the real-life daughter of Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy star Sandra Dickinson. David Tennant described the episode by saying "We get to see the Doctor's daughter, played by the Doctor's daughter." Moffett previously appeared alongside her father in the Big Finish audio story Red Dawn. Mentioned in the confidential, Peter Davison said to Georgia once he had finished filming Time Crash, "it's your turn" as in it was her turn to play a role.

Production

Having Jenny come back to life at the end of the episode was Steven Moffat's idea.

Reception

"The Doctor's Daughter" has received mixed reviews. Martin Anderson of Den of Geek! stated that it was "rather good - though badly plot-holed". He noted that it was yet another episode of Doctor Who "undermined by Murray Gold's incessant music". He also described the episode as "quite redolent of Tom Baker-era Who, with plenty of dark and cheap corridors to run down and two under-manned warring factions for the Doctor to bring peace to". For SFX's Ian Berriman, the running up and down corridors was reminiscent of Lenny Henry's 1985 Doctor Who spoof featured on The Lenny Henry Show. Berriman described the episode as "underwhelming", citing that because one "always suspect[s] she's a redshirt" it is difficult to care for Jenny. Although "reasonably diverting", Berriman argues that budgetary constraints make "the story feel so enclosed" and that the episode's plot, likened to "old-school Trek", seems too similar to that of the Sontaran two-parter immediately prior to this adventure because both involve militarism and cloning. Newsround's Lizo Mzimba also notes the similarities with "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky". Mzimba asserts that the episode's "biggest problem" is that it tries "to cram an enormous amount into 45 minutes" with most of the "interesting" and new ideas not getting "the attention they deserve" resulting in the audience not caring about either the human fighters or the Hath and thereby limiting a "sense of danger or menace".

Mzimba observes that since her return in "The Sontaran Stratagem", Martha shares little onscreen time with the Doctor therefore reducing the emotional impact of her departure in this episode. He describes Moffett as "superb", with Berriman calling her "cute as a button". Berriman praises Tennant's performance, but Anderson suggests that Tennant shouts too much. Anderson asserts that "Donna's role as the Doctor's conscience is beginning to take shape" describing this as "refreshing" in a companion and noting that "Tate has toned down the grating voice a tad".

External links

• The Doctor's Daughter on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• "The Doctor's Daughter" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage