Friday 9 May 2008

Doctor Who, Series 4, Episode 6 Trailer: The Doctor's Daughter

Very much looking forward to this one tomorrow (and I am enjoying these trailers with the close-up "eye" -- is this going to be important?):



I can't imagine that it is really going to turn out to be his daughter, is it? That will be too major a contribution to the Doctor Who legend, won't it? In the past Russell T. Davies has been contented with just odd one-liners about his family, and now a whole episode? I'm intrigued, all the more so with this great bit of casting -- of Georgia Moffett, Peter Davison (the fifth doctor)'s daughter.

Footnote 1 (13:31): in comments, Doug Chaplin agrees that there is likely to be more to this than meets the eye, but adds, "why would this be "too major a contribution" – the series started with the Doctor being accompanied by his granddaughter Susan". Well, since that opening episode (which I recently watched again, having received "The Beginnings" DVD set for my birthday), there have been scant references to the doctor's family, and Susan's identity has not been clarified. How is she his grandaughter? Who were her parents? What happened to them all? In general, Russell T. Davies has appeared content to offer little hints, e.g. the mention of his own wedding at the end of "Blink" last year, without filling in lots of details from his biography, and I'd still be surprised if he decides to do this with the forthcoming episode.

Footnote 2 (13.38): I notice that the writer of this episode is Stephen Greenhorn, who wrote "The Lazarus Experiment" in last year's series, and more recently two episodes of Echo Beach, which, along with its partner programme Moving Wallpaper, has been been a favourite of ours. That reminded me to check up on news about whether these two related series, which had relatively poor ratings (but then they were up against The Passion on Good Friday!), had been recommissioned. It seems that Moving Wallpaper will come back for a second series and Echo Beach will return "in some form" (Moving Wallpaper to return to ITV).

2 comments:

Doug said...

Like you, I suspect there'll be something else under the title, but why would this be "too major a contribution" – the series started with the Doctor being accompanied by his granddaughter Susan.

Mark Goodacre said...

Hi Doug; thanks for the comment; my own comment added now to the main post.