The Resurrection of Mars is a very different beast to its predecessor. Whereas Deimos was one of your usual base-under-siege stories, with Ice Warriors stalking corridors and gigantic devices being flipped on and off and the Doctor being mistrusted by figures of authority, Resurrection hinges around the machinations of the Meddling Monk, as he attempts to rewrite the course of history... and rewrite the Doctor's relationships with his companions to boot. There's a lot here about how the Doctor justifies his decisions-- why can he let the friendly security guy die in Deimos to save Mars when he can't let Lucie die to do the same? Why won't he let the colonists on Mars die to save the butterfly people of Halcyon?

These are good questions, but I'm not convinced that Jonathan Morris's script explores them in a fully coherent fashion. Why is security chief Grenville not worth saving when Lucie is? The Doctor spends much of Resurrection saying he can never let an innocent die at his hand even if many more are at stake, but no one ever brings Grenville up after the first couple minutes. He rails at the Monk for interfering in the Web of Time, but as anyone who's heard Storm Warning will know, it's something he'll do gladly on occasion. Trying to derive a coherent morality out of Doctor Who can be difficult, since the moral imperative tends to depend on the needs of the current story, and unfortunately, the Doctor doesn't even do good job justifying himself to his companions, merely giving some potted speeches that don't really address the point. (And Tamsin takes issue with the Doctor sacrificing Grenville to save the day… but later takes issue with his refusal to sacrifice Lucie to save the day. Does she have a consistent morality herself?)

The Resurrection of Mars wants to be a really important story, in terms of really big plot events as well as significant character moments. But it never quite hung together for me: the examination of the Doctor's morality doesn't go anywhere, and the other plot is far from interesting. So in the end you've got a lot of decent-to-great actors doing their best with ineffectual material, which isn't bad... just there, mostly. And what merits the story does have are overshadowed by the fact that I'm really uncertain about where the New Eighth Doctor Adventures are going these days...

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.

The current season of Eighth Doctor stories got off to a bit of a duff start with a new and not terribly engaging companion, Tamsin Drewe played by Nikki Wardley. Somehow in Jonathan Morris's two-parter Deimos/The Resurrection of Mars it catches fire, with the return of Sheridan Smith's Lucie Miller and Graeme Garden as the Meddling Monk, and various agonising about Ice Warriors and the fate of planets and whether or not the Doctor can or should take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. Oddly enough it's McGann who sometimes doesn't sound quite sure if he should be taking it seriously, but everyone else (including especially a guest performance from Tracey-Ann Obermann) is excellent. ( )