Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E06 The Doctor's Daughter

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Donna: Not what you'd call a natural parent, are you?
The Doctor: They stole a tissue sample at gunpoint and processed it. It's not what I'd call natural parenting.

In which an important and fascinating new character shows up... but not for long.

Martha is saying goodbye, but the Doctor's hand-in-a-jar violently teleports the TARDIS to an alien planet. (In case you're wondering why he keeps that thing next to the control panel, there's a very good reason for it.) Since the "Doctor Detector" only does that sort of stuff in rare situations, it could only mean two things: either the Doctor himself is on that planet, or something exactly like him.

The planet, called Messaline, is inhabited by two different species: Humans and Hath (walking fish). Only five seconds after stepping off the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions are held at gun point by human soldiers, and the Doctor is ordered to put his hand into a strange machine. There is some whinging, and then out of the machine steps a very pretty blonde girl—fully dressed and made-up, able to wield a gun, and snarky to boot.

The machine is a cloning machine, made for creating soldiers for either side of the planet's inhabitants. The hand-in-a-jar made the TARDIS arrive a bit too soon, which caused the Doctor's DNA clone to be on the planet in the first place. The Doctor realizes that this is, for all intents and purposes, his daughter now. He's extremely freaked out by this and tries his best to see her as a thing: a clone, a temporary echo, a "genetic anomaly". What the Hell, Hero? Donna calls him out on his Jerkass behavious and shortens "genetic anomaly" to "Jenny", which the girl likes as a name. She merrily calls the Doctor "dad." Jenny shows herself to be a remarkable soldier, implanted with all the instincts and history knowledge she needs for combat, much to the Technical Pacifist Doctor's aggravation.

They all travel together to the Humans' base. Along the way, Martha is kidnapped by the Hath, but no one can do anything about it for the moment. Here the storyline splits.

The Doctor and Donna are locked up in jail because the Doctor opposes the commanding General's plan to wipe out the Hath, and Jenny is tossed in for defending them. She tries to get to know her dad a little, and quickly points out that if he was a soldier, and if he has killed, and he if won a war... what's the difference between them? She has two hearts like he does, and she just wants to live for what she feels is right. Before that happens, they find out that the Humans are fighting the Hath for control of the Source. Jenny kisses her way out of jail, and frees The Doctor and Donna. They remain one step ahead of the humans, trying to get to the Source.

Meanwhile, Martha finds out the same from the Hath, and decides that the quickest way to get to the Source is over the top of the planet. Escorted by her new Hath friend, she travels the dangerous planet, avoiding swamps and fires. Her friend saves her from some form of alien quicksand and dies in the process, but Martha makes it to the Source... just as the Doctor and company arrive at the other door.

Of course, they're followed by various Humans and Hath, both shooting at one another as well as our heroes.

The Doctor finally explains to Donna why he's being so cold to Jenny: he used to be a father (and grandfather), before the Time War, when he murdered every person of his species. It's just too painful for him to have a new daughter this suddenly.

Donna, who has been noticing weird plaques above all the doors, uses her temp powers to put 2 and 2 together and figures out that the colony is not more than a week old. The mutual histories were merely warped by continued use of the cloning machine. The source, originally thought to be a mythical creator, is actually a terraforming device. The Doctor explains this to the mostly-bewildered clones before throwing the Source to the ground, destroying it. This subsequently releases the terraforming gases onto the planet's surface.

Perhaps justifiably, the Human General tries to shoot the Doctor. Jenny steps in front of him, Taking the Bullet, and dies in her dad's arms. The Doctor has the chance to shoot the General in revenge but doesn't. Instead, he demands that "this world of Human and Hath" be founded on "the Man Who Never Would" harm another soul. After a few minutes of waiting for regeneration, a heartbroken Doctor, Martha and Donna leave. Donna notes "I guess she wasn't enough of your daughter." To which he replies "No. She was too much like me."

Traveling back to Earth, Martha expresses her happiness at not being involved in any more death and destruction and warns Donna about the dangers of companionship. Donna laughs it off, and she and the Doctor head back out into the wide galaxy, while Martha goes off to help out Torchwood Three for a while. Just before the credits roll, however, it turns out the Doctor didn't wait quite long enough. Jenny wakes up and, much like her father, rambles on for a few minutes as she takes the last spaceship on Messaline to head out and travel the stars.

Tropes

  • Action Girl: Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, and Jenny. She was born to be a soldier and has the added advantage of being a Time Lady - what can you expect?
  • Actor Allusion: A complicated blend of this and Real Life Relative. Georgia Moffett, who plays Jenny, is Fifth Doctor Peter Davison's real-life daughter. Peter Davison is David Tennant's favourite Doctor and pretty much the reason he became an actor in the first place. Georgia Moffett is now David Tennant's wife.
  • After the End: Subverted.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: General Cobb. Given his age, either he was grown to that age or given its only been 7 days, you could speculate he's one of the original colonists and possibly one of the people who started the war in the first place. Given his hatred of the Hath, this could be a possibility.
    • Its also a possibility that he's a clone of the one of the colonists who started the war.
  • Androcles' Lion: The Hath trust Martha because she helped one of them with a dislocated arm.
  • Badass Pacifist: "I never would, Cobb. Remember that. I. never. Would." Turns out the Doctor is even scarier when he isn't willing to kill...
  • Cast Incest: Peter Davison, who played the Fifth Doctor (and who is pretty much the reason David Tennant went into acting), is Georgia Moffett's father. She is also now engaged to David Tennant. And they have a daughter.
    • This means the kid is now the Doctor's daughter's daughter, the Doctor's daughter, and the Doctor's granddaughter twice. Also, the Doctor is his own father-in-law. A truly meta example of My Own Grampa.
  • Cloning Blues: Lampshaded and subverted.
  • Covered in Mud/Quicksand Sucks: Martha doesn't have an enjoyable time getting to the Source.
  • Disney Death: Jenny.
  • Fish Person: the Hath
  • Forever War: The fight's gone on for around 700 clone generations. Over seven days.
  • Future Imperfect: The human/Hath creation myth. Might have to do with the 700 generations, even if the terraforming ship only landed there last week.
  • General Ripper: Cobb. Donna even calls him "General Nutjob."
  • Genius Ditz: Jenny in regards to her Time Lord senses, which she's initially unaware of.
    • Her ability to flip through a corridor of deadly moving lasers clearly couldn't be done by a normal human being, nor even a super solider (none of them seem to want to try it). Its likely she was using something similar to the Ninth Doctor's ability to slow down his perception of time, which allowed him to move through fast moving fan-blades in "The End of the World".
  • Genre Blindness: Donna says she'll be with the Doctor forever - Rose said the same thing.
  • Good-Looking Privates: Jenny has managed to overtake Ross Jenkins in this category.
  • Good with Numbers: Donna names the trope, talking about herself.
  • Guy-On-Guy Is Hot: Jenny snogs a guard to get close enough to grab his gun. Donna quips that she'd like to see the Doctor try the same thing.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Jenny, and Martha's Hath friend.
  • He Is Not My Boyfriend: Donna and the Doctor, yet again.
  • Laser Hallway and She Fu: Jenny
  • Like Father Like Daughter: Jenny's final scene has her steal a ship and run away to the stars. Sound familiar, Doctor?
  • Meaningful Echo: "It's not impossible. Just a bit unlikely."
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Or the title, technically.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Doctor inadvertently reveals more of the map... leading to preparations for a war to get to the newfound temple. Whoops.
  • Not So Different: Jenny spends half the episode trying to convince the Doctor he's being a hypocrite. She's probably right.
    • Her final scene has her steal a ship and run away to the stars. Sound familar?
  • Opposite Gender Clone: Jenny
  • Punny Name: Donna bases the name "Jenny" off the Doctor's "genetic anomaly" comment.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: In order to get through the generations in the time stated each generation needs to have lasted about four minutes and that is assuming 24 hour non stop combat, which is not what we see.
  • Sequel Hook: Jenny's final scene.
  • Show Some Leg: Done straight (Jenny kissing the guard) and subverted with the Doctor telling Donna to save her "wiles" for an emergency.
  • Stable Time Loop: The TARDIS sends them to Messaline because it's detected Jenny; it arrives a bit early, setting up Jenny's creation.
  • Super Soldier
  • Taking the Bullet
  • Tempting Fate: "Can't be much further-- *falls in quicksand*"
  • This Is Sparta: Said softly for once, but it counts.
  • Too Cool to Live: Ultimately subverted.
  • Too Good For This Sinful Messaline: Jenny... or so it seems.
  • Trapped by Mountain Lions: Sadly, Martha gets treated with this. Nothing she does in this episode actually has any effect on the main plot and she spends half the episode seperate from the other characters.
    • On the other hand, the intention was to show that she is capable of acting on her own without the Doctor's help. Having her moving along at the same pace as two time lords arguably works for this.
  • Truly Single Parent: The Doctor, of course.
  • Two Scenes, One Dialogue: The map scene.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The Doctor is forced to become a parent against his will. And HE is the one in the wrong for not liking it.
    • Not to mention that given how soldiers forced him at gunpoint to give a DNA sample against his will, one could argue that this technically could be considered a form of rape.
  • The Unintelligible: The Hath, but that doesn't stop Martha. It may be handwaved that she could hear them because of the TARDIS's translation doohicky at work.
  • We Need a Distraction: The mouse.
  • Wham! Line: "This war's gone on for seven days."
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Jenny.
    • Its worth noting, if the date 60120724 is 24th July 6012, this is a full 1000 years after we know various races have access to time travel, so Jenny concievably could be anywhere by now.
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