The second half of Season 50 of Doctor Who would’ve aired from the 23rd January to 12th March 2016, after a two-month gap since the mid-season finale, The Slave Master. At the end of the episode, companions, Erin and Kyle left the TARDIS and settled in 1865, leaving the Doctor travelling alone with just new companion, Raleigh Baker-Mitchell, a time historian from the far-future. Also in the second half of the season, another new companion, Pete Fletcher, would be introduced, played by Daniel Adegboyega.
The title sequence would have stayed the same, apart from the fact that Montserrat Lombard and William Moseley’s names have been replaced by firstly Sarah Winter, and then Daniel Adegboyega.
Apart from that, there’s not too much more to say, so let’s dive into Season 50, Episodes 9 through 16.
THE DIMENSIONS OF SPACE AND TIME
Season 50, Episode 9
Written by DAVID WEDDLE & BRADLEY THOMPSON
Directed by NICK HURRAN
TX Date – 23 January 2016
This episode is set directly after the Doctor and Raleigh’s first proper adventure in the TARDIS, after she comes onboard and the episode begins with a short 5-minute scene showing the ending of that adventure (with pretty much no other context) before they find themselves back in the TARDIS. As the TARDIS enters flight, mid-conversation, everything stops dead and all the life is drained out of the TARDIS. It turns out that Vortisaurs have grabbed hold of the TARDIS in the vortex and are attacking it. The story turns into a homage of Alien, as the Doctor and Raleigh get split up and lost in the TARDIS, which is malfunctioning due to the damage, and several of the Vortisaurs break into the TARDIS and stalk them through the corridors.
This episode really focuses on the character drama between the Doctor and Raleigh, as it only takes place on the TARDIS apart from the first scene. However, Raleigh does enter a room on the TARDIS which starts bringing her memories to life and they begun to get relived, as we flashback to many stages in her life and find out more about her. We come to find out that her time-ship was in fact from Earth’s future and its mission wasn’t exactly what she told the Doctor, to accurately record history, but rather to alter it for the government’s best interest. Only the audience find this out, through these TARDIS flashbacks, and the Doctor is blissfully unaware.
The third act of the story ramps up, as we find the lack of power on the TARDIS frees the Master from his cell and he finds Raleigh, including finding out about her secret. Raleigh and the Master end up making a pact together, but we cut away before we know what that pact is. The Master then helps Raleigh to find the Doctor (all the while keeping himself hidden, making the Doctor think he’s back in his cell) and he gives her instructions about how to get the TARDIS back online. After having to kill a Vortisaur, which the Doctor is very regretful of, despite it trying to kill her, the Doctor reunites with Raleigh and they manage to get the TARDIS powered up again and materialise out.
This story would be a low-key story, which really exists to develop the character of Raleigh and push forward the plot, by introducing her pact with the Master, which obviously will get revisited at some point in the future.
UNDER THE LAKE, PART I
Season 50, Episode 10
Written by TOBY WHITHOUSE
Directed by DANIEL O’HARA
TX Date – 30 January 2016
This episode is set in a Scottish mining facility in 2119, the Drum, at the bottom of a lake created by the burst of a dam in the 1980s. The plot revolves around a mysterious spaceship which the crew find in the flooded valley outside. The Doctor and Raleigh arrive to find the crew hiding in a Faraday Chamber from what appears to be two ghosts trying to kill them. The episode mainly focuses on the Doctor and Raleigh trying to save the lives of the base, in the classic base-under-siege manner, from the ghosts, as well as trying to understand where they came from and trying to find a rational explanation. The characters, like any base-under-siege story are the stock types you’d expect, but they quickly get killed off one by one, turning into ghosts, only leaving a few of them left.
In the second act, the Doctor discovers strange markings on the inside of the mysterious spaceship, and she works out that they are turning everyone who reads them into signal transmitters, sending a message out into space.
The third act sees the base become flooded and the Doctor and Raleigh, again, get separated, each with a couple of the survivors each. The Doctor decides to continue her investigation by going back in time to when the spaceship first crashed in the valley, during the 1980s. The cliffhanger however, sees Raleigh looking out of the window of the base, to see the Doctor’s ghost standing there.
UNDER THE LAKE, PART II
Season 50, Episode 11
Written by TOBY WHITHOUSE
Directed by DANIEL O’HARA
TX Date – 6 February 2016
This episode opens oddly with the Doctor breaking-the-fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, in the TARDIS, explaining the concept of a bootstrap paradox, begoring cutting back to the action, continuing on from where Part I left off.
When the Doctor travels back to 1980, she finds out that the cause of the ghosts was a being called the Fisher King who was being transported on the mysterious spaceship and he created the markings which allows everyone who sees them to continue existing as echoes after death transmitting his message. After time travel shenanigans enuse, with the Doctor and co travelling to 1980 twice, reliving the same half hour, the Doctor ends up getting inside a suspended animation capsule, which Raleigh opens in the future. It is then revealed that the Doctor’s ghost was actually a hologram that the Doctor generated herself and programmed actions and phrases that Raleigh explained to her, based upon what she saw in the future, thus creating a bootstrap paradox.
The episode again plays upon Raleigh’s urge to try and change history, with her trying to save the Doctor’s life in several different ways, despite her knowing (or so it seems) that she’s dead, after seeing her ghost.
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
Season 50, Episode 12
Written by JACQULINE RAYNER
Directed by JOHN DAHL
TX Date – 13 February 2016
This episode is set in the modern day and introduces, new companion, Pete Fletcher. It also sees the return of Home Secretary, Oliver Griffiths, from the Poisoned Sea. The episode is in fact a pseudo-sequel to the Seeds of Death and features the return of the Kyrnoids. Like a lot of companion introduction stories in the past, it’s told entirely from Pete’s prespective as he gets embroiled in an adventure which changes his life.
The episode follows the standard mad-scientist formula and sees Oliver Griffiths, now a year on from the events of the Poisoned Sea, hell bent on saving the world from climate change, but no one will listen to him, and he is in danger of the Prime Minister sacking him. Obviously, Griffiths’ solution involves using the Kyrnoids to turn humans into plants, which by result balances out the amount of oxygen vs carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pete comes into this story as he is the husband of one of the people who have gone missing, several of which Oliver Griffiths kidnapped and turned into Kyrnoids. This leads Pete into a spiral of investigation, which as it turns out the Doctor and Raleigh are also investigating, which leads them directly to Griffiths’ greenhouse. At the warehouse, there’s a showdown to which Pete ends up saving the day, including the Doctor and Raleigh’s lives, but his wife, Val, doesn’t make it, as she’s been turned completely into a Kyrnoid and Pete ends up having to kill her himself, which he heartbreakingly has to justify as a mercy killing.
The episode ends with Val’s funeral, whereby at the end of it, just as the Doctor and Raleigh are about to walk off into the TARDIS, Pete asks him he can come. He says that he needs to take his mind off her, and he’d love to just get away from his boring life, especially as there’s nothing left for him. The Doctor says that it’d be her pleasure, and he comes aboard the TARDIS, does the whole bigger-on-the-inside routine, and they take off. During this, intercut with the funeral, the Doctor pays Oliver Griffiths a villain, in his new UNIT cell, and she tells him that what he did was wrong, but it was for the right reasons. She says that he went too far, but he is right that the planet is dying, and she says she is glad that he’s woken up to that reality, even though he went about it the wrong way. The Doctor then walks away, and it cuts back to the scene, I just spoke about.
However, after all that, we see Oliver in his cell, many hours later and a sinister laugh is heard emanating around the cell. Griffiths asks who it is and the Master appears in his cell. He isn’t really there but he’s psychically projecting himself into Griffiths’ head. He tells Griffiths that he was so much potential, it just a shame he can’t release it. Before he begins laughing again and we cut to the end credits.
Originally, this episode, in its first draft, only featured Pete as a secondary character, but Moore liked the character so much that he decided to make him a companion for the rest of the season and asked Jacqueline Rayner to rewrite the episode as a companion introduction story. Therefore the character of Pete Fletcher was actually created by Jacqueline Rayner and not Ronald D. Moore.
RESERVOIR FROGS
Season 50, Episode 13
Written by JOHN DORNEY
Directed by DANIEL O’HARA
TX Date – 20 February 2016
This episode is Pete’s first adventure in time and space and the Doctor decides to take him to a planet in the far future called Vuncaria II but unfortunately the Doctor is a crap pilot and she gets knocked off course, instead arriving on a human colony in the distant future, a cyberpunk world of crime and terror. The episode plays out, as the title suggests, as a homage to Reservoir Dogs, but with the gangsters being frogs… well not actual frogs but a race of aliens called the Kroakets, who are humanoid like frog creatures.
As with any good Doctor Who story, the Doctor, Raleigh and Pete get embroiled into the adventure, as they help try to bring the Kroakets to justice and stop their heist. While the episode is quite ridiculous in places, it plays it straight, when it comes to tone, and allows the comedy to come through the off-beat deadpan nature of the episode. As well as this it’s obviously not just Pete’s first proper adventure, but his first alien planet and also his first trip in time, so all the usual stuff which happens with that kind of thing, well, happens.
However, after everything is resolved and the Doctor, Raleigh and Pete get back in the TARDIS, she picks up a faint transmission from Earth, in 3307. The Doctor manages to get it on the screen and it’s Hogan, asking the Doctor for immediate help. He says that something is very, very wrong, as it cuts to end credits.
REMEMBRANCE OF THE GAIANS
Season 50, Episode 14
Written by RONALD D. MOORE
Directed by TERRY McDONOUGH
TX Date – 27 February 2016
This episode sees the Doctor, Raleigh and Pete landing in London, 3307, where they find the streets deserted, but unlike the Doctor’s last visit, stripped of all Gaian propaganda as their defeat in 3302 seems to have proved permeant. The episode plays out as a mystery, with the Doctor, Raleigh and Pete trying to work out why London (and presumably everywhere else) is deserted, all the while trying to find Hogan, which they eventually do, when the Doctor is in fact kidnapped by a group of survivors, leaving Raleigh and Pete on their own. The Doctor is taken to a base, where he finds Hogan and Amanda running a small taskforce (in very much a Dalek Invasion of Earth kind of way). The episode, really, plays out as a homage to that story, with Hogan explaining that Earth was invaded one year earlier, but the invasion was slow, no one realised it was happening until it was over: the culture was assimilated and distorted long before the actual invasion occurred. Hogan explains that it was caused, unfortunately, by the power vacuum after Destiny of the Gaians, and if the Gaians were still in power, it would’ve never happened. As Hogan updates the Doctor about everything, the revelation is made, towards the end of Act Two that the invaders were the Cybermen. Meanwhile, we focus on Raleigh and Pete as they go back to the TARDIS, without having the Doctor, and Raleigh asks the Master for help. Together with the Master, they walk straight into the Cyber factory, as the Master decides to hand in the two of them for conversion, while saving his own skin (but he dresses it up as a way to find the Doctor to Raleigh and Pete). There they find out the Cybermen’s plan was to invade Earth to lure the Doctor there, so they could take the TARDIS and his time travel technology. The cliffhanger for their story sees the Master turning on them as they are taken for conversion. All the while, the Cybermen close in on the Doctor and the survivors, as she gets them into the TARDIS, and they begin killing the survivors off. They fight back, led by Amanda and Hogan. It’s no use… and then a laser beam shoots off a Cyberman’s head, and then another and then another. The Doctor looks ahead, confused at what’s happened. In front of her stands Zenla (played by Juliet Landau), brandishing a gun, as she says, “I presume that’s you, Doctor”. Behind her then emerge, Gemma and Caitrin who say that they picked up Hogan’s transmission and they are ready to stand side by side with the Doctor, as we cut to the closing credits.
THE THIRD PLANET, PART I
Season 50, Episode 15
Written by RONALD D. MOORE
Directed by RACHEL TALALAY
TX Date – 5 March 2016
This is the start of the epic 2-part finale of the season and as such begins with a very peculiar cold open which sees Erin and Kyle in 1871, sat outside their house, when the TARDIS lands and much to their such, a Cyberman walks out, grabbing them, repeating “You Will Become Like Us” as we enter the opening titles. The rest of the episode sees us get back to that point, as the Doctor is saved from the Cybermen by Zenla, Gemma and Caitrin (as we saw in Episode 14) and we get an epic shoot out to begin the episode between the survivors and the Cybermen as they all load onto the TARDIS, however the Cybermen manage to take the TARDIS, with the survivors stowed away onboard, and the Doctor and co still on Earth. They use the UNIT Time Machine, which Caitrin used to bring everyone together and get them there, to follow the TARDIS. The plot diverges into three with the Doctor, Zenla, Gemma and Caitrin; the Master, Pete and Raleigh and finally Hogan and Amanda onboard the TARDIS. Raleigh and Pete manage to escape the conversion process, leaving the Master at the mercy of the Cybermen. The Master bargains with them, a bargain which both parties intend to break, and he ends up helping with their Master Plan, to go back in time and stop the destruction of Mondas, which the Master can’t help but roll his eyes at. So, the Master finds his way onto the TARDIS with the Cybermen, which he helps navigate properly, as Raleigh and Pete spend their time in this story rounding up survivors on the Earth and evoking a brand-new revolution against the Cybermen, which by the end of this episode, fails as it just gets everyone turned into a Cyberman. The majority of this episode builds up to the cliff-hanger and up until the end of Act 2, we follow the journey to the South Pole in 1986, as both the TARDIS, following the perspective of Hogan and the Master, and the UNIT Time Machine, with the Doctor, Zenla, Gemma and Caitrin, journey across time. The TARDIS takes so long to get there, as the Doctor manages to use the UNIT time machine, to attract Vortisaurs which slow down the TARDIS. The Doctor’s party arrive in the South Pole about 10 minutes before the others, and the four of them do their best to dodge the Doctor’s original self, as he trundles out of his TARDIS with Ben and Polly (achieved via body doubles, and cleaned up footage, used sparingly – the full DW Genesis effects were deemed too expensive). They walk further out, through the snow, as the TARDIS lands thee and the Cybermen exit, led by the Master. The Doctor and the Master have a one to one confrontation, whereby the Master reveals that Raleigh has been working with him all this time, to which the Doctor feels massively betrayed. The Cybermen then grab a hold of the Doctor and inject her with Cyber nano-mites. Gemma, Zenla, Caitrin, Hogan and Amanda all try and fight the Cybermen as they try to stop what is happening, but to no avail – the process begins as the Doctor is taken over and her skin starts turning to metal as she in just 60 seconds, and through intense agony, becomes a Cyberman. A single tear runs down the Doctor’s steel face. Zenla disables several of the Cybermen fighting her way through and getting the Doctor onto the TARDIS, along with the others. They dematerialise and land in 1871 outside Erin & Kyle’s house, against Zenla’s plans but where the TARDIS wants them to go, and the opening scene is replayed. Erin and Kyle enter the TARDIS where Hogan explains what’s happened. Zenla says that the Doctor doesn’t have long left and soon her body is going to start fighting off the Cybermites, with her Time Lord antibodies. Erin says that’s a good thing as she’ll be back to normal, but Zenla solemnly says for her to begin saying her goodbyes. The TARDIS rematerializes on Mondas, 1986, as the leave the TARDIS, landing in the snow. Zenla explains that they need to ensure this planet is destroyed no matter what. The CyberDoctor falls to the ground, as the antibodies take over, and Erin shouts at Zenla asking what’s going to happen. Gemma tells Erin that the Doctor has had many faces and many lives, and now this one is up. A golden glow begins to appear underneath the CyberDoctor’s eyeholes, as the armour suddenly burst open and the steel goes everywhere, falling into the snow. The Doctor’s body, now free of the steel casing, is nothing but a golden bubble of energy, reforming and changing, as we focus on Zenla, Erin, Gemma, Kyle, Hogan, Amanda and Caitrin gasping as the face melts away and becomes something entirely new, as the Doctor sits up, shook and unable to catch her breath: the Fifteenth Doctor… Adjoa Andoh, as we cut to closing titles.
THE THIRD PLANET, PART II
Season 50, Episode 16
Written by RONALD D. MOORE
Directed by RACHEL TALALAY
TX Date – 12 March 2016
This episode is the first episode for the Fifteenth Doctor, Adjoa Andoh, and obviously it was expected to be a Fourteenth Doctor episode. The cliffhanger was considered not to show 15, but the BBC wanted to promote Episode 16 as Adjoa Andoh’s first episode. The episode begins with a previously segment before going straight into the titles, which are the same apart from the name change from Bond to Andoh and the removal of Bond’s face in the sequence. Throughout the whole episode, Andoh would be wearing Bond’s costume. As the episode has a lot of things it needs to do, it’s running time would’ve been extended from 60 minutes to 75 minutes. It not only introduces a new Doctor and acts as a post-regeneration story, but it also acts as a celebrate and send off of the Samantha Bond/David Suchet eras (really) with Erin, Kyle, Gemma, Caitrin, Zenla, Hogan, Raleigh and Pete all featuring as well as the Master and then the Cybermen as the main villains. Also, it takes place parallel with the events of the Tenth Planet and sees the Doctor trying to keep history together.
So, the plot again splits into three with the Doctor, Zenla and Caitrin in the South Pole keeping history back on track and defeating the present day Cybermen, which is all tied in with lots of post-regenerative angst, leading up to the Doctor becoming herself truly as she kills all the Cybermen, making it known that she’s going to be a much darker Doctor than the one before. The second plotline sees Erin, Kyle, Gemma, Hogan and Amanda on Mondas as they end up blowing up Mondas by setting off a nuclear weapon, to preserve the timeline. This is mainly Hogan’s doing, even though he knows the Doctor wouldn’t approve. Finally, we see Raleigh and Pete defeat the Cybermen on Earth in 3307, only for Raleigh to convene with the Master, as the story arc about her and the Master is resolved, with her eventually choosing the Doctor’s side and helping to defeat the Master, joining the team on Mondas. In the end, the Master is seemingly killed in the destruction of Mondas. The episode ends with everyone meeting in the TARDIS, to find the Doctor in her new costume, having shaved her head, and meaning business. Initially she’s cold as she begins to drop everyone back home: first Erin and Kyle, then Caitrin, then Gemma, then Hogan, but when it comes to dropping Zenla back on the Timelord/Vex fleet, she breaks, letting all the emotion in as she remembers all the times they had together, and also Zenla’s death (which is still in her future) from last season. They have a touching farewell, before the Doctor, Raleigh and Pete take off in the TARDIS, for another adventure. The episode then ends with a caption reading: “The Doctor will return at Christmas in ‘The Last Winter’”.
So, there we go, the end of the season… and what a season it was. We finish the season with an entirely new TARDIS team: The Fifteenth Doctor, Raleigh and Pete. You’re probably wondering why the Chapter Three model of having a movie as the regeneration story for the Fourteenth Doctor didn’t happen this time around and it was because basically… studio politics: the sixth Doctor Who movie, which had the simple working title of Doctor Who VI, was being battered around back and forth by Paramount since the release of Genesis and was basically stuck in development hell and would not be ready to be released in late 2016, meaning Samantha Bond would have to sign up for a third season as the Doctor, which she was reluctant to do, as 16 episodes a year was really tiering and she’d done 31 episodes and a movie. In addition, CBS and Paramount’s tensions was at all time high and in the end, CBS gave the directive to Moore to perhaps think about introducing the Fifteenth Doctor in the Season 50 finale, instead of doing a movie… and that’s what happened. Doctor Who VI was put on the backburner until a later date and Fourteen became the first Doctor to regenerate in a television episode since the Ninth Doctor in 2000.
Also, more changes were ahead, as Season 51 would not be starting in September 2016, like 49 and 50 had, but in April 2017, after a Christmas Special on the 25th December 2016, which would be 15’s first proper story. But first September, the Elysium Season 2 would air, so until then goodbye!
WIDWWA 