The red garden

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Episode of the Doctor Who series
title The red garden
Original title The Waters of Mars
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
length 62 minutes
classification Season 4, episode 16
new series: 58th episode in total,
including classic series: 754th episode in total ( list )
First broadcast November 15, 2009 on BBC One
German-language
first broadcast		 December 12, 2012 on FOX Channel
Rod
Director Graeme Harper
script Russell T Davies
Phil Ford
production Nikki Wilson
music Murray Gold
camera Ernest Vincze
cut William Oswald
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
Planet of the Dead

Successor  →
The End of Time

The Red Garden (English title The Waters of Mars ) is the third of five special episodes of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who , which were broadcast in 2009 instead of a regular season. It is the last story before the two-parter The End of Time , in which David Tennant made his last regular appearance as the tenth doctor .

The episode aired on November 15, 2009 on BBC One and BBC HD . It was written by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford and directed by Graeme Harper .

In the year 2059 the doctor finds himself in the first Martian base of mankind and has to decide whether he should use his knowledge of future events to save people and thereby endanger the future development of mankind.

The episode won a Hugo Award .

action

The time-traveling doctor lands with his time machine , the TARDIS , in the lifeless, red desert of the planet Mars . There he finally comes across the Bowie Base One station , the first permanently inhabited station of mankind outside of the earth. Once at the base, he is initially treated with suspicion by the residents under Captain Adelaide Brooke, but can quickly convince them that all they can do so far from Earth is trust.

Only now does the doctor recognize the base and its inhabitants, because from his perspective they are an important part of human history. But when he learns the exact date, he is determined to leave the base immediately. Because he knows that November 21, 2059 is the day on which the base will be destroyed. This is one of the few fixed points in history that he cannot change as it is an integral part of the story.

David Tennant plays the doctor.
Lindsay Duncan plays Captain Adelaide Brooke.

Meanwhile, in the station's greenhouse, the approaching catastrophe begins: Andy Stone and Maggie Cain become infected by a strange, water-based life form, causing their bodies to begin to expel large amounts of water. The doctor Tarak Ital is also infected soon afterwards. Captain Brooke tries to get to the bottom of what has happened. Since she doesn't quite trust the doctor, she has his spacesuit locked away. Since he can no longer get to his time machine, he accompanies her. Maggie is found unconscious and taken to the quarantine station. When she sees images of the earth and the great oceans there, she also changes. The station residents realize that the goal of this life form is the earth with its abundant water reserves.

Captain Brooke then gives the order to evacuate the station. While the crew rushes to load supplies into the shuttle waiting for them, the infected manage to penetrate into the central dome of the base. There they begin to spread water over the building and penetrate the interior. In the midst of this chaos, the doctor decides to leave the base as there is nothing he can do for the crew. However, Captain Brooke does not want to let him go without explanation. He explains to her that she and her comrades will die today by giving the order to detonate a nuclear device. And that through this event the future of humanity between the stars will be made possible. Her death will spur her granddaughter to follow in her footsteps and ultimately guide humanity's first flight beyond the light.

While the doctor turns his back on the base and begins his way back to the TARDIS, Steffi Ehrlich and Roman Groom are also infected by the water. Maggie manages to escape from the quarantine station and also infect the shuttle pilot Ed Gold in order to bring the shuttle under her control. While he is fighting against the infection, gold activates the shuttle's self-destruct mechanism as a final act to protect the earth from the life form. This leaves the last three survivors with no escape route.

With the explosion of the shuttle and the desperate radio messages from the remaining people, the doctor changes his mind. He turns against fate and time itself. After all the losses he had to suffer in the past, he now comes to the conviction that as the last Timelord he has the right to subordinate time to the laws of Time no longer apply to him. He tries to save the crew with all means at his disposal, but can do little. That's why Captain Brooke activates the base's self-destruction. As a last resort, the doctor uses one of the base's remotely controllable robots to send it to his time machine and let it materialize inside the base. At the last second they manage to escape, while the base including the infected and the alien life form is destroyed in an atomic explosion.

The Doctor lands the TARDIS on the street in front of Captain Brooke's house on Earth. Yuri and Mia are shocked and confused by what has happened and leave the Doctor and Brooke there alone. The doctor explains to Brooke that, as the last of the Timelords, he no longer feels bound by the laws of time, that on the contrary, he has the right to change time as he sees fit. And he is proud that he succeeded for the first time in saving an "important" person and not just a few of the "unimportant" ones. However, Brooke is deeply indignant and angry at this attitude and declares that such power is not right. She knows that her death made mankind's future path to the stars possible and that this future may never come true, despite the doctor's assurances. Leaving the doctor behind, Brooke enters her house, where she draws her gun and points it at herself.

With Brooke's death, the timeline - and with it future human history - has remained largely intact. Only the exact circumstances of their death and Yuri's and Mia's survival have changed, and humanity is now learning the reason for the destruction of the base. The doctor becomes emotionally overwhelmed by Brooke's suicide as he realizes that his arrogance has consequences. By intervening, he forced Brooke to take her life. The Ood Sigma (who predicted his death in Planet of the Ood ) appears to him on the snowy road. Visibly shaken, the doctor asks him whether he has gone too far, whether the time for his death has now come. But the ood does not answer and dissolves. The doctor then enters his time machine and starts to operate the controls with a defiant "No!"

production

The Red Garden was written by then-producer and showrunner Russell T Davies , along with Phil Ford , who previously wrote many episodes of the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures .

(from left to right) David Tennant, Gemma Chan, Lindsay Duncan and Aleksandar Mikic shoot in Newport

The episode is the third of five special episodes in the series that were produced and broadcast in 2009 instead of a regular season. On The Red Garden 2010, the two-parter followed at Christmas 2009 and New Year The end of time , represented the last performance Tennant as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor.

The production team had around five weeks to prepare for filming, while filming took four weeks.

Details on the production of the episode with comments from those involved can be seen in the one-hour episode "Is there Life on Mars?" Of the accompanying series Doctor Who Confidential .

Locations

Exterior shots of Mars were filmed in a quarry a few kilometers from the BBC studios. Parts of the set were covered with huge green screens, which were later digitally replaced on the computer by the expansive plains of Mars.

The scenes in front of Captain Brooke's house in London were filmed on February 27, 2009 on Victoria Place in Newport . The road had to be covered with artificial snow .

The National Botanic Garden of Wales in Llanarthne served as the backdrop for the scenes in the station's hydroponic garden . Scenes in the long corridors of the station were filmed in a data center in Newport.

music

The music for the episode was composed by Murray Gold , who has been responsible for the series' music since 2005.

In 2010 a double CD with the soundtrack of the four specials The Other Doctor , Planet of the Dead , The Red Garden and The End of Time was released. However, not all of the pieces composed for Der Rote Garten can be found on the soundtrack.

Charisma

The Red Garden first aired simultaneously on BBC One and BBC HD on November 15, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.

According to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, the episode was watched by 10.32 million viewers. Of these, 9.94 million viewers were on the broadcaster BBC One, while another 376,000 saw the program on BBC HD at the same time. This made The Red Garden the second most successful program this week on BBC One. If you put the viewers on both channels together, the show was the fifth most-watched TV show of the week.

In 2010 the episode was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc . It was also included in the “Doctor Who: The Complete Specials” DVD box along with The Other Doctor , Planet of the Dead and The End of Time , and on the “Doctor Who Winter Specials 2009: Waters of Mars and The” DVD set End of Time ".

It was first broadcast in German on December 12, 2012.

criticism

The Guardian's Sam Wollaston writes that this episode sees the viewer seeing a new side of the Doctor: an indecisive, confused man who is sometimes just wrong. He praises the action and describes the episode as "scary, moving, important, believable and sometimes even funny". The only thing he didn't like about this show was the robot gadget .

For Neil Midgley of The Telegraph , the episode contained many visual references to classic science fiction series and films such as Moon Base Alpha 1 , Thunderbirds and Back to the Future . He felt that this episode corresponded more to the classic Doctor Who episodes than those of the new edition broadcast since 2005, which all too often only played on earth for him. For the fans of the old Doctor Who episodes, this episode is therefore a classic according to him.

Robert Colvile of The Telegraph describes how the humor and charisma that characterize the series give way to a cooler, more menacing tone in this episode. He describes the plot as a standard Doctor Who mystery, but the real story is not the crew's struggle for survival, but the fact that the doctor for once cannot bring the situation to a happy end. He's unsure how the kids will interpret the plot, but according to Colvile, it grips the way for Tennant's final two-parter.

According to IGN UK's Orlando Parfitt , it wasn't just the audience that understood that the Doctor's days were numbered. The main character knew this too, as she looked nervous and acted indecisive and insecure. He praised the structure of the plot, which allowed Tennant to explore the "darker side" of the doctor. Parfitt describes the episode as a great improvement over the previous episode Planet of the Dead and awarded it a rating of 9.5 out of 10 points (“Amazing”).

Awards

In 2010 the red garden received a Hugo Award in the category “Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form”. She sat thereby u. a. against the previous Doctor Who specials The Other Doctor and Planet of the Dead .

David Tennant won a Constellation Award for Best Male Actor in a Science Fiction TV Episode of 2009 for his portrayal of the Doctor in The Red Garden in 2010 .

Production designer Edward Thomas received a BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Design for this episode.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.foxchannel.de
  2. ^ A b Neil Midgley: Making the Waters of Mars flow for Doctor Who. In: The Telegraph . November 6, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  3. ^ A b Doctor Who Confidential . Episode 61: "Is There Life on Mars?" . BBC , November 15, 2009.
  4. ^ Doctor Who in Wales - Victoria Place, Newport. In: BBC Wales Arts. Retrieved June 2, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Tim Lewis: Fans gather to see Doctor Who's new assistant. In: WalesOnline. March 2, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  6. ↑ Christian Junklewitz: Music Junkies: Doctor Who says Vale Decem! In: Serienjunkies.de . October 9, 2010, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  7. ↑ BBC One Programs - Doctor Who, The Waters of Mars. In: BBC Online. Retrieved June 2, 2011 .
  8. ↑ Over Ten Million Watched Waters of Mars. In: The Doctor Who News Page. November 25, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  9. ↑ Sam Wollaston: Doctor Who. In: The Guardian . November 16, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  10. ^ Neil Midgley: Dr Who: The Waters of Mars - first review. In: The Telegraph. October 30, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  11. ^ Robert Colvile, Doctor Who, BBC One, review. In: The Telegraph. November 13, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  12. ↑ Orlando Parfitt: Doctor Who: "Waters of Mars" Review. In: IGN UK . November 16, 2009, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  13. ↑ 2010 Hugo Award Winners. In: www.thehugoawards.org. September 5, 2010, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  14. ↑ 2010 Hugo Award Nominees - details. In: www.thehugoawards.org. April 4, 2010, accessed June 2, 2011 .
  15. ↑ Looking Back At ... The 2010 Constellation Awards. In: constellations.tcon.ca. Retrieved June 2, 2011 .
  16. ↑ BAFTA Cymru Awards - Winners in 2010. In: www.bafta.org. Retrieved June 2, 2011 .
Doctor Who Serials and Episodes
First doctor

The Child of the Stars  (1963)  • The Daleks  (1963/1964)  • The Daleks' Master Plan  (1965)  • The Tenth Planet (1966)

Second doctor

The Power of the Daleks  (1966)  • The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) 

Third doctor

The Three Doctors (1972/73) 

Fourth doctor

City of Death (1979) 

Fifth doctor

The Five Doctors (1983)  • The Androzani Caves (1984)

Sixth doctor

Attack of the Cybermans (1985)  • Planet of the Dead (1985)  • The Judgment: The Enigmatic Planet (1986)  • The Judgment: Mindwarp (1986)  • The Judgment: Vervoid Terror (1986)  • The Judgment: The Worst Enemy (1986)

Seventh doctor

The Hand of Omega (1988)

Eighth doctor

Doctor Who: The Movie (1996)

Ninth doctor

Rose  (2005) 

Tenth doctor

The girl in the fireplace  (2006)  • The nature of man  (2007)  • Blood ties  (2007)  • Don't blink  (2007)  • The red garden (2009)  • The end of time (2009/2010)

Eleventh doctor

Doctor's Day (2013)

Twelfth doctor

Fallen Out of Time (2017)

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