A maniacal not-quite-Zuckerberg-or-Hugo-Drax-clone creates killer TomToms and hotboxes the elderly
It’s The Clone Wars but with a baked potato planet and a nuclear weapons Tinder app.
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Martha’s back again— Again! And now there are two of her as the weird bath-time clone is keeping a side-eye on the Doctor, as he does his best to foil the Sontaran plan for world domination and keeps a trigger-happy UNIT in check.
Donna, meanwhile, is trapped in the TARDIS, and the TARDIS is trapped aboard General Staal’s spaceship, whence Staal, his clone buddies and Luke Rattigan, aka Not-Mark-Zuckerberg, witness the potatoification of Planet Earth.
And Wilf is in peril. Also the world. And the Sontarans prevent nuclear war with a Tinder app.
Listen to this review of The Poison Sky now, which continues the storyline in, and our review of, N046 The Sontaran Stratagem.
Lots of good character moments in this one. For example, Donna’s mom is seriously badass. Donna just blubbers “Doctor” over and over again, whilst mom runs in the house, comes back with an axe, and no hesitation, breaks the car windshield. I felt like Donna’s little moment of surprise (you’ve got an axe?) was perhaps inspiration for later when she has to take a mallet to the Sontaran soldier.
Then there’s the Doctor communicating with Donna by way of double meanings as she’s listening in on his exchange with the Sontarans. And I really love it when he goes all MacGyver, making shit out of rubber bands, hot glue, and AA batteries.
We see Martha showing compassion to her dying clone, then using the moment to help save others by getting information out of her.
And Grandad is delightful, stealing the show every time he’s onscreen.
Reference tracker:
21:06 Times like this I could do with the Brigadier.
26:40: Doc asks military handing him a gas mask “Are you my mummy?”
Stray thought:
I like the decor inside the Sontaran ship. Very trendy 3-D purple box motif.
Rating: Bingbong bingbong HEY!!