The Waters of Mars DVD NTSC Region 1 5-episode box set DVD PAL Region 2 5-episode box set Standard DVD 1-episode volume See below for Blu-Ray options

(Doctor Who Story No. 206, starring David Tennant) written by Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford directed by Graeme Harper produced by Nikki Wilson music by Murray Gold 1 episode @ 62 min. Story: The Doctor explores Mars, quickly encountering an early human colony just as trouble breaks out on their base. What has caused endless amounts of water to spring forth out of several colony members? Does the ancient civilization of the Ice Warriors have anything to do with the underground glacier that the humans decided to build their base on? And what historical significance is the Doctor keeping secret about the events that are about to take place?

DVD Extras include:

• Doctor Who Confidential behind-the-scenes featurette: Is There Life on Mars? (58 min.) (also included on smaller DVD volumes)
• Deleted & Extended Scenes (multi-story sets only)
• English Subtitles

This story is refreshing in many ways, putting in a lot of the essential small touches that had needlessly been left out of recent previous adventures, and choosing a superb setting for itself. It also levels the playing field across time, treating a futuristic story like a historical one to an extent probably not seen since "The Tenth Planet" (story no. 29) back in 1966. But all is not good. Beyond the usual silly scares, the bulk of the remaining drama dredges up anti-heroic time travel foolishness that hasn't been this silly since the Christopher Eccleston era, or prior to that, the worst of the William Hartnell era.

The Red Planet

As the Doctor comes out wearing the space suit he acquired in "The Impossible Planet" (story no. 178), [....or is it the one from "42" (story no. 188)?] another of the long-term design problems with the new millenium TARDIS starts to beg for a fix that it never gets in this tale. Namely, we could really do with an airlock between the interior and the exterior of the TARDIS today. Go back and have a good look at "Four to Doomsday" (story no. 118), and you'll see how the previous design neatly incorporated an airlock into itself, perhaps by accident, but it worked so well. I miss it. Perhaps it's ingrained as deeply into me as it is because "Four to Doomsday" was only the fifth Doctor Who story I ever saw.

The interior of the Mars base is not quite as cool as what other Martian films (or Doctor Who base-defense bottle stories) have given us. The bright white control areas seem out of place for the red planet, but worse are those massive corriders. Much is made about how much easier it would be to bicycle the length of them than run or walk, but bikes would have cost too much in fuel to be brought in from Earth. Well, what about all the fuel it took to cart in all those massive walls and ceilings to build such a friggin' tall, wide, LOOOONG corridor that does nothing but connect one dome to another? If you can afford the fuel for that, you can throw in a dozen bikes easy! And since this adventure reportedly takes place after "the oil apocalypse", you'd think they might have turned to anti-gravity propulsion or something instead. Without some such alternative, a Mars mission might easily not get off the ground at all.

Bottled Water

But the tale's creativity seems to dry up there. These stories typically receive a stronger line of investigation into the causes of such take-over phenomena, often not so much on a scientific basis, but more importantly in terms of character logic, to determine the wants and needs of the antagonists, what must happen for them to continue taking people over... usually in aid of the protagonists stopping the process, or in the best of cases, to reverse it. The effort here in this story focuses so strongly on running away from the phenomenon, that it can't help but be one of the weaker examples of this sci-fi subgenre.

These types of tales also often thrive on a fairly large cast of semi-interesting decently developed characters (who of course gradually get whittled down to just a few near the end). Perhaps due to the fact that this story is little more than half as long as the average movie or full-length Doctor Who story, and the fact that it gets distracted from formula by a less worthy idea, most of the guest characters in this story never really come alive as interesting three-dimensional people... which makes it hard to root very deeply for them. Expanding this tale to somewhere between 100 and 120 minutes might have allowed space to remedy this and several other of the story's omissions.

Lindsay Duncan's base-leader character of Adelaide Brooke is really the only guest character who gets a decent level of characterization, necessary of course to facilitate the other main idea of the piece, but she does stand out amongst all the other guest characters because of it.

Water and Ice

Were we witnessing the genesis of the Ice Warriors in this story? Nothing remotely so cool. Would the Ice Warriors play some significant role in the tale? Again, the story is somewhat disappointing in that regard. They do at least gain a good mention, as the Doctor speculates on their past involvement. Curiously, he puts their civilization in the past, when all their stories take place in Earth's spacefaring future. The Ice Warrior civilization is due for a resurrection, I think, and would make a more interesting story than what we get here.

One of the best parts of the story are the few lines that the Doctor speaks in "Ancient North Martian", which David Tennant pulls off brilliantly with a little help from a very creepy look of recognition from the water creature. A glimmering of culture at last, and to hell with the TARDIS's translation circuits. Excellent!

Perhaps the saddest part of not getting to see Ice Warriors in a story taking place on their planet and with something speculated to be a part of their concern, is the fact that they are upstaged by a Dalek cameo, as Russell T. Davies once more needlessly dredges up and relives the impact of yet another of his previous Earth-bound stories. Oh yawn and snore. We've seen too much Dalek recently already. Emphasis in the wrong place yet again.

"And that's how you create history."

Ultimately, a lot of this story's limited screen time is wasted on an old moron's conundrum that should have been definitively put to rest by now. No amount of future knowledge should ever prevent the Doctor from playing hero. Ever. Stop trying to remake Star Trek's "The City on the Edge of Forever". We've all seen it before, and it isn't that good. And you know why not. Come on now Russell Davies, say it with me, as you wrote it: "Every single decision we make creates a parallel existence, a different dimension...". That includes decisions to save Martian colonies after having seen future obituaries of them.

This time travel non-interference conundrum for idiots is so much in contradiction with what usually (and thankfully) happens in most other Doctor Who stories, that the writers spend a lot of time trying to qualify it: most little things can be changed, but big ones can't, yada yada yada. And this seems to do a disservice to Adelaide Brooke's character exposition - normally a welcome necesity for the bottle story formula, it now feels contrived to try to make a dumb conundrum work.

"What Happens Here Must Always Happen."

"Your death creates the future."

"You wondered all your life why that Dalek spared you?  I think it knew."

As the story moves into its climactic action sequences, the philosophical battle-lines are clearly drawn... the Doctor's attempts to leave without influencing events further produce one heart-wrenching moment after another, all drawn out far too long and building up so much tension that his flip back to the heroic side becomes predictably inevitable.... only now so much time has been wasted that the heroics, although good, are quite rushed and feel like too little too late. If the Doctor had been on his principles from the beginning, he could have worked to reverse the effects of the water virus and tried to save everyone. He certainly could have prevented some of them from being infected in the first place. Even with the turn-around as late in the day as this, I think the directing could have gone up another notch by including shots of the police box dematerializing on the plain, and rematerializing inside the base. I agree with leaving out its departure from the base before the explosion to maintain the idea that they may have been a second or two too late, but I think people who get their first taste of Doctor Who with this story will need to see the earlier extra movement to really understand what happened, a problem also sadly inherent in the far superior story "The Impossible Planet" (story no. 178). At least this tale fares a bit better with its TARDIS movement by showing the materialization in the snowy street afterwards. Good one! The most memorable and moving piece of Murray Gold's score for me occurs right at the end of this story, and though the best portion of it is available on the official CD release, it isn't particularly well labeled or placed. It's been stuck in at the end of the suite for "The End of Time" (the next story), and confusingly labeled simply "Vale", just like the first track on the first CD, which features the choral melody only. But it's the pulsing string rythms underneath that give the variation in "The Waters of Mars" its power, and the first "verse" that has this rythm only with no melody sadly does not appear on CD. The second verse with melody appears on disc 2, track 25 - possibly the best piece of music in the whole of the 2009 year of specials.

Music by Murray Gold "Vale" (Disc 2, track 25 version), and a suite of original music new for this story is available on: Audio CD - Doctor Who: Original Music from "Series 4: The Specials". 2-disc Audio CD album More info & buying options "Turn Left" is available on: Audio CD - Doctor Who: Original Music from "Series 4" (2008) More info & buying options "All the Strange, Strange Creatures" is available on: Audio CD - Doctor Who: Original Music from "Series 3" (2007) More info & buying options

"No One Should Have That Much Power..."

Bizarrely, the unnecessary tackling of the idiot's time travel conundrum has brought out an arrogant side of the Doctor here. His actions didn't go too far - in fact I think his actions didn't go far enough. But, his arrogance IS going too far, and it all stems from the comparatives concerning who is big and who is small, who is powerful enough to make changes or laws about changes and who isn't. And with that recognition in mind, it is Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford who have committed the worst of the arrogance, by assuming that Adelaide Brooke's sacrifice held the future of Mankind's exploration in its grip. It's particularly idiotic in the version of the future before the Doctor's influence, where no one survives to inform Mankind that the sacrifice actually saved the Earth's population from an infection by an unknown virus.

But, let's face reality. Exploration is such a strong and basic drive, it could never hinge on who gets the honour of being first, or who inspired whom to compete for the honour of being first. If Adelaide Brooke's granddaughter doesn't feel the excitement to do it, someone else will. The ideas are stronger than the individuals carrying them out. And I think the audience is even more willing to accept that with an adventure set in our future. Do any of us really need to reserve such a role in advance? If we did, it might discourage the actual first pilot to Alpha Centauri from taking the plunge.

And let's not pretend either that the disaster of a lost Mars base and the loss of either all or most of her crew is more inspiring than a Mars colony that survives and thrives. What's really UNinspiring is a Mars base commander who survives a disaster and then shoots herself at home. She'd never have done that if the Doctor hadn't brought up the subject of the idiot time travel conundrum in the first place and filled her head with it. Personally, I'll take my inspiration from Zephram Cochrane in Star Trek 8: First Contact, a much better combination of bottle-story horror and triumphant space exploration.

I did find the Doctor's references to his lost home planet finally going somewhere new and interesting with his revelation of his new relationship to their old laws... if only he would have remained humble and confident with it. But you can see him being nervous and brash with it instead, as though he doesn't yet really believe he deserves to be himself in these circumstances... thus he replaces one disaster with another one today. I felt hesitant to pass judgment on this story without seeing where this new character arc of dealing with the lost planet's laws would go, knowing that most Doctors have to deal with their faults and flaws and mistakes in their final stories, and they don't come out unscathed, and knowing also that ultimately, this bizarre time-burp of an arc would only be worthwhile if the Doctor chose his way back into the home universe where Gallifrey has always been and always will be, putting an end to Davies' ridiculousness with its supposed non-existence.

In the end, despite a great well-realized setting, a half-decent A-plot premise, and exceptional work from our passionate director Graeme Harper, "The Waters of Mars" is decidedly disappointing, as written. Extensive character study can prove that it is technically within good time travel theory in terms of on-screen action, yet sadly it articulates and strongly EMOTES much in direct contradiction with good time travel theory, without giving better theories any voice at all. It might yet just squeeze past the breezy, equally philosophically unfocused "Planet of the Dead" (story no. 205), while "The Next Doctor" (story no. 204) surprisingly sails by still unchallenged for first place amongst these post-season-30 specials.

Thankfully, the best was still yet to come....

DVD NTSC Region 1 5-episode box set for the North American market: in the U.S. in Canada	DVD PAL Region 2 5-episode box set for the U.K.	DVD NTSC Region 1 1-episode volume for the North American market: in the U.S. in Canada	DVD PAL Region 2 "Winter Specials" 3-episode volume for the U.K.
Blu-Ray NTSC Region 1 5-episode box set for the North American market: in the U.S. in Canada	Blu-Ray PAL Region 2 5-episode box set for the U.K.	Blu-Ray NTSC Region 1 1-episode volume for the North American market: in the U.S. in Canada

Contact page

LYRATEK.COM

Read the In-depth Analysis Review for the next story: "The End of Time" Home Page Site Map Star Trek Sliders Doctor Who David Tennant Era Episode Guide Catalogue