I have to be honest: I've generally been a bit underwhelmed by the between-seasons Doctor Who specials. They're always fun, but they've generally felt a bit lackluster compared to the full seasons. I'm happy to report that "The Waters of Mars" is easily the best of the specials yet. It's also quite possibly the bleakest Doctor Who story ever produced. And both of those qualities are directly linked to the way in which the story tackles questions of fate and free will.
The Doctor finds himself on the first Mars colony, named (either perfectly or too cutely, depending on your musical tastes) "Bowie Base." He's thrilled to meet Earth's first interplanetary pioneers, particularly their courageous and wise captain Adelaide Brook-- but he's also disturbed, because he knows the exact date on which an unspecified disaster wipes out the colony and everyone in it. (Yes, folks, the date also happens to be the day on which he arrives). Normally this sort of thing is no problem for the Doctor-- he'll figure out what alien beastie he needs to defeat and save the entire colony, right? Not this time, it turns out: some moments in time are fixed and unchangeable, he tells us, and this is one of them. "Everything else is in flux; anything can happen. But those certain moments, they have to stand.... This is one vital moment. What happens here must always happen." He tries to leave, but there's a mystery here, too: he doesn't know the nature of the disaster or the reasons behind it, so he stays a little longer than he at first intends. (As it turns out, it involves intelligent water trapped millennia ago inside a glacier by the Ice Warriors. Who knew?)
But the investigation draws him deep into the events of that fateful day at Bowie Base, which leads the Doctor to another moral conundrum, linked to the fourth season episode "The Fires of Pompeii." In that story, the Doctor discovered an alien plot to conquer the Earth that could only be thwarted if he caused Mount Vesuvius to erupt, destroying a city but saving a world. As he prepares to abandon the Mars colonists to their fate, he hints at that episode's moral crisis in explaining his departure: "Imagine you were in Pompeii, and you tried to save them. But in doing so, you make it happen. Anything I do just makes it happen." The Doctor here questions the very basis of his forty-odd years of adventuring: does he fix crises, or does his meddling in history create them? Here he opts not to interfere, illustrated in a powerful sequence in which the spacesuited Doctor marches across the Martian landscape back to the TARDIS while all hell breaks loose in the base behind him.
But the Doctor is like Superman: he has to help. It's not in his nature to turn his back on a crisis, even if it seems hopeless; even if he knows it "must always happen." So he returns to the colony and tries to help the pioneers escape from the water creatures. In doing so, he makes a realization about his nature as "Last of the Time Lords": time has laws, but as the sole inheritor of the Time Lords' power, "the laws of time are mine, and they will obey me!" There's some sinister stuff in the last few scenes of the episode, as the Doctor's epiphany leads to some Nietzschean pronouncements about his right to impose his will on the fabric of the universe. Then something happens that may humble him a bit, but there's still a hint at a slightly-darker tone for the series to come. (Perhaps he'll be turning into the Valeyard after all?)
Doctor Who works best when its stories are built around complex moral dilemmas-- not least of all because it's his strong moral core that makes the Doctor such a great hero. To see chips in that morality, particularly when they grow out of its judicious application to an imminent crisis, is an intriguing turn for the character's story to take. I'd be surprised if the next two specials-- David Tennant's final appearances as the Doctor-- didn't expand on these themes. The Doctor is facing down a prophecy-- "He will knock four times"-- and he's bound to use his mastery of the laws of time to try to escape it. I suspect the conclusion of the Tenth Doctor's saga will involve his repayment for the hubris he displays in "The Waters of Mars."
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