Life on Mars (2006) s02e04

So this response is going to be about the importance of show bibles for consistency’s sake, not even continuity. Or at least the first few paragraphs. And I just remembered where I heard of show bibles–“Star Trek.” The phaser rifle was only used in the pilots even though it was in the show bible as available for the rest of the series. Broke Chekov’s gun, didn’t it.

Anyway.

“Life on Mars” doesn’t seem to have a show bible but it also doesn’t have any reliable consistency, which affects the verisimilitude as well as the potential for character development.

Co-creator Ashley Pharoah’s got the writer credit this episode and it initially gave me comfort—one of the three creators must have some idea what’s going on in the show. Turns out… not really.

Like when John Simm meets someone he knows from the future and acts threateningly weird, even though he’s been having this same experience since the first episode of the show and then almost every episode afterwards. It sort of seems like it’s to remain accessible to new viewers but the show’s not actually episodic enough? It’s weird and they should have it figured out halfway through the second season.

Then there’s Liz White’s understanding of Simm’s condition. Condition meaning her new boss and usually unrequited love interest (usually love interest, not occasionally not unrequited) Simm always talking about how he’s in a coma in the future and just imagining all this stuff. White needs to be reminded of it almost every time he brings it up in the second season because she’s forgotten since getting her promotion.

It means White’s character never gets to develop when there always need to be a restart. Every episode has them ostensibly building the White and Simm subplot but they always reset it so it never actually builds up. One step forward, two steps back. And now I’m remembering what the second season was like to watch the first time through.

I wonder if I ranted about show bibles back then too.

This episode’s about young women ending up murdered and dumped. The solution’s going to involve key parties thrown by sleazy but seemingly harmless car salesman Nicholas Palliser and his wife, Eva Pope. White and Simm pose as a married couple while Philip Glenister, Dean Andrews, and Marshall Lancaster bitch about having to work surveillance.

The investigation stuff is a good episode for White and Simm; White especially. Glenister eventually gets some great comic moments. The A plot works. It’s just everything else, except maybe Lancaster getting dating advice from Simm, is way too thin.

Also the one of the only established character traits White does have is being jealous of Simm and a female guest when the show goes out of its way to establish to the viewer there’s nothing going on. It’s like they gave White a promotion this episode so they could demote her character development.

So, it’s a pretty mediocre episode (for the always well-acted, always well-produced show). It’s entertaining enough, with some great jokes but it doesn’t add up to anything.

Life on Mars (2006) s02e03

New writer (Julie Rutterford) and director (Richard Clark) to the show this episode; they do a fine job, Rutterford even getting to approach some character development for John Simm as far as his relationships with his teammates. There’s not a lot, there’s nothing conclusive, but there’s more to it than usual because Simm’s big mouth gets someone else hurt.

The episode opens with two doctors in the present talking about coma Simm’s mental state; the one on the TV thinks he’s doing fine, the one on the radio thinks he isn’t. While the present directly impacting the past (or imagined past, however you want to define Simm’s condition and the show’s reality) is now an episode and series standard, there really aren’t any rules to it. It’s a B plot directly and obviously affecting the A plot but the only time Simm acknowledges it is in the B plot. Even though he’s making all sorts of bad calls in the A plot and he probably ought to see the connection.

There are going to be a series of IRA bombings, only Simm considers himself an expert in IRA terrorism and he knows there’s no IRA attacks using dynamite in 1973 and so it’s all got to be a hoax. It takes until after one of his teammates gets hurt, after he can’t remember how to disarm the next bomb, does he finally consider the possibility there’s really a series of bombings happening. He spends most of the time—outside the actual bomb action—arguing with Philip Glenister and Liz White about how he’s got to be right.

All the evidence points to Irish workers who want a living wage, with main suspect Brendan Mackey having stolen dynamite from his workplace, a construction company run by Peter Wight. Simm’s going to spend most of the episode protecting Mackey from the rest of the team, occasionally in amusing scenes, but Mackey’s a sturdy guest star not some kind of standout. It’s Simm’s show and it doesn’t help when he spends the entire episode looking like an unsympathetic asshole to everyone else.

Particularly White.

There’s a lot about the British being xenophobic about the Irish, with the promise of actual racism around the corner thanks to East Asian immigrants. It even makes a joke about it; maybe the episode’s strangest moment. Not sure why they needed to include it. The show’s got so many layers and it only acknowledges a few of them, but sometimes it seems like “Mars” doesn’t get at least a couple of other really obvious, important ones.

Especially when you lay over the whole “coma fever dream from Simm’s perspective” thing.

Though the season did establish Simm can change the future from the past, which seemingly didn’t make the show bible because the resolve this episode should’ve made it into Simm’s past future studies of the past.

It’s a really good episode for Dean Andrews. It’s a good episode for everyone, though it’s just too thin for Simm.

“Mars” is tricky because it’s so well-produced, so well-acted, the lack of overall show direction makes for a very sore thumb.

Doctor Who (2005) s03e06 – The Lazarus Experiment

What is this show’s problem with companions’ mothers? We briefly met new companion Freema Agyeman’s mom, Adjoa Andoh, in the season premiere and she seemed fine.

Nope.

She’s possibly even more annoying than previous companion’s mom Camille Coduri, which doesn’t even seem possible, but the episode manages it, with mystery dweeb Bertie Carvel warning Andoh against Doctor David Tennant. Even as Tennant is saving the world from literal monsters as well as explicitly saving Andoh’s daughters, both Agyeman and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Not to mention strangely henpecked son Reggie Yates. Tennant saves them all.

But Andoh doesn’t like him because he’s nerdy. Is Andoh okay with Mbatha-Raw’s creep boss, Mark Gatiss, who’s the villain and subject of the episode.

We open with Tennant bringing Agyeman home; she’s not his new companion, so she’s got to go home. And he manages to drop her off just twelve hours after picking her up, showing a far better control of time travel than he ever did with previous companion Billie Piper.

Of course, he’s also about to have conversations with Agyeman, which didn’t happen much with Piper.

Anyway. They see on the news how Gatiss is going to change the course of human history so Tennant decides to stick around.

They go to the presentation and Gatiss makes himself young—he starts in old age makeup—and then turns into a monster and decides to eat everyone. So Tennant has to save the day, while convincing the locals Gatiss is a monster—see, he can change back into his human persona after he feeds.

You think once he saves Andoh the second time she’s going to stop being so one-note but nope.

It’s strange the show had a first time writer—Stephen Greenhorn—handle establishing not just Agyeman’s supporting cast but also some kind of conspiracy against the doctor. Especially such a mediocre one. Greenhorn’s teleplay would do better if Gatiss were better—it’s a little much when he gets a Roy Batty moment just so he can artlessly mug—and Richard Clark’s direction’s fine.

Tennant, Agyeman, and Mbatha-Raw are all great.

And it’s significantly better than most Earth episodes, I suppose. Just imagine how much better it would be if the Andoh stuff weren’t bad and the monster didn’t look like mid-nineties video game CGI.

Doctor Who (2005) s03e03 – Gridlock

Really nice direction from Richard Clark this episode; really nice. It’s a strong episode overall, because it’s set out in space in the future, which are usually the best “Who” episodes (so far), but this episode manages to do it with a bunch of regular humans.

Well, not regular humans. 5 billion years removed new humans. This episode is another in the “The Face of Boe” subplot, which started in the first season with the Face of Boe (voiced by Struan Rodger) just appearing in background then figuring in last season (in an episode involving cat person nurse Anna Hope, who appears here again) and it finally gets something of a conclusion here.

But the Boe stuff is overarching—and seemingly for future episodes in at least the season—while the main action has Tennant deciding he’s not dropping off Freema Agyeman yet (with her consent) so they go to the far future and off to another world. Only it’s New Earth, which we didn’t get to see last time and this time it turns out it’s gone all dystopian and people are traveling on the freeway for years to go ten miles to the promised lands of the suburbs.

Pregnant young persons Travis Oliver and Lenora Crichlow kidnap Agyeman so they can get in the three-or-more lanes, which forces a panicking Tennant—he really does bring disaster to those around him—to travel through layers of flying cars. He’s got to drop between cars, which means introducing amusing supporting characters, and he’s got the cars he spends more time in, which means lots of good dystopian melodrama.

There are also kittens.

So it’s a very cute episode in some ways and terrifying in others, as Agyeman and Tennant discover the secrets of the New New York, which involve giant monsters.

Lots of good material for both Agyeman (who realizes the possible consequences of her time-traveling on a whim) and Tennant. And the way writer Russell T. Davies is developing their relationship is rather nice. Agyeman has to figure it all out on her own here, making her much more of a partner.

The thing about Tennant lying to Agyeman about his home planet being destroyed is a little bit of a stretch though. It’s like Tennant’s biggest concern—she’s going to die before he can tell her the truth, not she’s going to die.