Hot Picks
|
|
|
Doctor Who - Partners in Crime
episode 4.1
UK 2008
produced by Phil Collinson, Russell T. Davies (executive), Julie Gardner (executive) for BBC Wales/BBC
directed by James Strong
starring David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Sarah Lancashire, Bernard Cribbins, Jacqueline King, Verona Joseph, Jessica Gunning, Martin Ball, Rachid Sabitri, Chandra Ruegg, Sue Kelvin, Jonathan Stratt, Billie Piper (cameo)
written by Russell T.Davies, music by Murray Gold
TV-series Doctor Who, Doctor Who (David Tennant), Doctor Who (new series), Donna Noble
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
|
|
|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
A year ago (in the episode The
Runaway Bride), Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) has turned down
Doctor Who's (David Tennant) offer to travel with him through time and
space - a decision she has since come to regret, so she investigtes all
kinds of weird occurencies in hopes to bump into the Doctor again - and
when she stumbles upon a mysterious weight loss pill called Adipose,
bingo, there he is. Thing is, Adipose is not really a weight loss pill
but alien semen that creates cute little aliens out of fat mass, ant the
head of the Adipose company, Ms Foster (Sarah Lancashire), who sees
herself as a supernanny, wants to use the the entire UK as a giant
breeding facility (after all, everybody takes weight loss pills, right?).
When the Doctor and Donna interfere, however, Ms Foster is less than
pleased, but of course, the Doctor can put an end to her ambitious plans
in the end, while the alien babies - just innocent cute creatures - are
allowed to leave the planet unharmed. And at the hands of the alien race
that ordered the babies (yup, they are actually mail-order kids),
Ms Foster even gets her just desserts. And the Doctor? Yup, he gets
the girl - Donna -, who's more than willing to travel with him this time
round. A cameo by Billie Piper as Rose hints at things to come, but has
no narrative significance to this episode. The good news first:
Catherine Tate is nowhere near as annoying as she was in The
Runaway Bride. The bad news though is that this episode is little
more than an overlong effort to set Tate up as the Doctor's new sidekick,
using a very slim story as a hanger. True, the story could have been
biting social satire, but it's simply never allowed to fully developed in
favour of giving the Donna-character way too much room to develop. That
all said, Partners in Crime isn't all bad, it does feature at least
a few moments of suspense and comedy (first and foremost a running gag
featuring Verona Joseph tied to a chair that makes you wish she'd become
the Doctor's new sidekick) that really work, but overall, the whole thing
seems just way too insignificant to be even vaguely memorable.
|