The Tenth Doctor, traveling alone lands on Mars: the red planet. Its 2059 and the first humans settlers have set up a base and everything seems ok…

One of the things I love about this episode and Doctor who in general, is that you can just put on a story and  as long as you know the basics you can enjoy it. These days most series are continuing dramas: you have to have watched everything single one up until that point to understand what’s going on.

Also this does have a certain feel of those sci fi adventure films: Warlords of Atlantis, Journey to the Centre of the Earth - a group of people exploring the unknown, with dangers and peril along the way.

The base on Mars has only a few people operating it, and one of their objectives is growing food using water from an underground frozen lake. The water however contains something alive.

Its a great setup, but the big focal point of the episode is that the Doctor knows that on this date in history, the crew all die. Adelaide Brooks - the commanders' death inspires her descendants to travel among the stars, and this event is a fixed point in time. It has to happen and the Doctor knows he can’t get involved.

The monster/alien in this is water based and takes over the people, it quite nicely realised, and of course, Earth is full of water. If it gets to Earth the human race will perish.

There are some rewarding moments for the long tern fan; Adelaide recalls seeing a Dalek a - reference to the series 4 finale, just tying things in - quite often these things are forgotten.

There is a part where, in trying to out run the human crew that have been possessed by the water creature, the Doctor modifies a robot to form transportation, echoing a similar scene from The Runaway Bride.

This story comes before the Tenths eventual death and it builds on the tension, since he knows its coming - well we all did at the time. Its the climax of the episode where the Doctor decided to get involved - something he shouldn’t do, it has consequences..

I rewatched this as I’d been going through the Time Lord Victorious series, as this is where the moniker comes from. Its nice that an Ood appears during then end, as the TLV series features Brian the Ood.

A great episode.