Just after finally defeating the Sontarans on modern-day Earth, the Doctor’s TARDIS takes the Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble and Martha Jones on an unexpected trip to the barren planet Messaline. Arriving right in the middle of a war between humans and Hath, the Doctor meets someone he thought he never would: his daughter. Can the Doctor accept this clone as his offspring, and can he stop the war before it all ends in massacre on both sides?
Rate and review below:
pretty sure this is the weakest episode in the season, and it’s not even bad, which goes to show the quality of Series 4. Cool idea with Jenny, I think it’s just a shame nothing interesting is done with it. Although, the whole “battle going on for generations but only lasting a week” thing is a great twist, very Moffat for something not even written by him.
I really like this episode. I think that the characters are great. I like that we have both Donna and Martha and I believe that it gives them both time to shine. I also think that Jenny is a fun concept. It is still in the bottom half of season 4, but that says more about the quality of this season than it does about this episode.
If it means anything, my most prominent thought when first watching this was, “Georgia Moffett is super hot.” Oddly and disappointingly underwhelming for the only proper Ten/Donna/Martha episode, something most noticeable when the Hath dies, Martha cries, and we move on as if nothing bad has happened. The moments I like, such as the scene I referenced, and Donna angrily defending Martha to Jenny, are so few and far between, I feel like this should’ve come before the Sontaran two-parter, making that one that much more important.
As an aside, if I see someone online say, “The Doctor’s daughter is the Doctor’s daughter!” or “The Doctor’s daughter is the Doctor’s wife!” one more time, I might just become the man who would.
I think it is a very weak story when it comes down to it. The plot is not particularly good, and it really feels like a waste of Martha coming back.
That “man who never would” speech is just terrible, it’s up there with the 11th Doctor’s Akhaten speech for me - just way too hammy for it’s own good.
The story did give us Jenny though who went on to have a great audio series so there’s that.
A 2/5 
Also:
It feels like it has been a while since we disagreed on here. Feels like the good ol’ days!
I just rewatched her Torchwood episodes. That was a waste. She gets stuff to do in this, at least!
ooooooooooh it’s bad
Maybe the only dud of Series 4 for me.
Martha is wasted again, the actual plot is a plodding runaround and Jenny isn’t half as interesting as she really should be.
Plays with a couple interesting ideas but it’s an episode I skip on rewatches.
4/10
I do agree that Martha’s a bit wasted here but I did enjoy this episode! The Doctor and Jenny have a really nicely developed relationship and no wonder we got the Jenny big finish audios after, she’s such an interesting concept and this episode likes playing with those a lot
Not my fav of s4 but did feel like a step up in quality from the last batch of episodes
I also still like Flux and loathe The End of Time 
I remember liking this one a lot when s4 came out, but as time has gone on I have liked it less and less. I must say I’m surprised to see so many others say this one is meh too, I always thought this was a highly rated ep and I was the weird one for being ehh about it.
Mostly, I just cannot stand Jenny. I find her deeply irritating tbh 
A real comic book sensibility to this one, in fact Jenny’s first appearance would work as a splash page. The limited sets (a couple corridors & tunnels mostly) give it a Classic Who feel but it deals with some interesting ideas in a rather shallow way, racing through the plot. If it wasn’t for TV Club I probably wouldn’t be watching this again.
PS - to earn a father’s love just backflip through a laser beam security system.
There’s a couple of good ideas here (the war that’s lasted a week, Martha and Hath Peck)
Mostly though, the episode is on the weaker side, with nothing special to mark it out, except the “Man who never would” speech, which is so over the top and preachy. (Admittedly, it’s probably in character for 10, but given I don’t like 10’s character, it’s a slog to watch)
One of the single most frustrating episodes. Like, of the entire show, not just NuWho.
There’s part of me that is actually willing to defend the “I never would” moment in the abstract, as a reflection of a post-Time War Doctor. His pacifism was one of the main things I remembered liking about Tenth as a character growing up. I’m even willing to hand-wave away the above examples of a gun-toting Doctor, as in that specific instance, of raising a weapon after the battle was already over, just to sate his vengeance… yeah. I fully believe that the Doctor, ideally, “never would”.
But WOW, does that sentiment not work for Tenth. The Doctor, in the abstract, never would. But Tenth “I am the Time Lord Victorious”, “We wanted to live forever, so the Doctor made sure that we did”, “It’s not fair!”? He abso-bloody-LUTELY would. Yet another example of the bizarre character inconsistency that makes Tenth my least favourite Doctor.
And yet, it’s how his character is treated in-story that really gets on my nerves. The way that Jenny’s ‘birth’ and his position as an unwilling parent (there’s a certain word to describe how this whole subplot is coded…) are handled is almost-impressively icky. Even with how it alludes to Susan in the dialogue, the way that Martha and especially Donna are so cavalier and ‘oh, you’ll get used to it’ about what happened… no thanks. I normally get queasy whenever this kind of thought experiment gets brought up but… just imagine if it was Donna or Martha who got sampled instead of the Doctor, with this same dialogue. (Yes, I know that in-universe that was the next part of the plan, but that’s not what the show focused on, is it?)
The lore surrounding the Human/Hath war is kind of interesting, and I like how Donna’s workplace skills get put to practical use in the finale, but even within that worldbuilding, I also don’t like how the humans discuss pacifism. It often feels like writers for the show just take the Daleks being genetically engineered to hate at face value, and then assume that violence and hatred are just genetic traits for every other species. Yes, in-universe reasoning, but it’s such a weirdly-recurring thing with the show that I just instinctively reject it whenever it comes up, especially with the zero amounts of pushback it gets in the frame.
Some of my gripes could probably be filed under ‘it ain’t that deep’ like with Tooth & Claw or Revolution Of The Daleks… but I still don’t like it. Biggest dip of Series 4 and an episode I genuinely don’t want to ever rewatch.
When this first aired I really enjoyed this one. It has The classic companions are split up in opposite factions and find each other at the end trope. And I do think both companions are great in this.
Martha even though she doesn’t understand a damn word (translation matrix hello?)[1] from the hath. We get to see her being a nurse and fixing a dislocated shoulder and taking risks by going onto the surface.
Donna is great at playing family therapist and then at realizing somethings up with the numbering and eventually brings out the stunning revelation of just how long this has been going on for.
Jenny is a fantastic character and really eager to learn from her dad [2] but also the acceptance she wants from him. Are any of the other humans that attached to their parents? I mean is it the time Lord that allows her to be so different?
The Doctor i really wasn’t a fan of that much. He pretty much spends the whole episode pissed off that Donna keeps referring to Jenny as his kid, and he looks at her at times the way he says he’ll look at Jack later on this season. But once he accepts Jenny after the backflips and not killing the general. He has this look of oh yeah that’s the Doctors daughter who is my favorite Doctor’s daughter. Who hopefully will become the Doctors wife[3]
All that being said every rewatch it has gone down consistently I think mostly because Jenny doesn’t do anything after this episode. We never (on tv) see her again and you probably could’ve had this exact episode without her. Not that I would’ve wanted her NOT in it but i feel like they figured out they wanted her in it. They figured out a funny title and forced a story to fit it.
The general seems like every annoying classic who leader. The fact it’s only been a few days and yet both sides that hundreds of generations deep already is insane. We only see one battle between the sides and it’s lackluster. Also do we see hath cloning machines? What if these are the original hath confused at the turn of the humans.
I did like the terra forming machine.
A literal magic ball, smash it on the ground & it magically starts terra forming!
You know it’s bad when “Martha gets stuff to do” amounts to her being sidelined away from the Doctor and Donna[1], and crying at a drowning fish.
you could’ve left her out of this story and barely a thing would change ↩︎
But the fish would’ve still had a dislocated shoulder(?) if not for Martha
But I would say that her story with the injured Hath is one of the better parts of this story. It shows a lot of Martha’s personality and her growth since we last met her.
For some reason, when I first watched this episode, I really loved it. When I last rewatched it, however, many aspects just fell flat. The episode does have some strong aspects (the human-Hath war, and endless and very rapid cloning), but it doesn’t ultimately fulfil them. I know the focus is meant to be Jenny and the Doctor’s relationship, but given that they barely know each other, it doesn’t work as well - but again, there’s some good stuff here, just a tad undercooked.
Overall, the episode wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great. Solid 6.5/10 (I’ve placed it at 7 for my story rating, as there’s generally more good aspects than bad).
