From MadCap's Couch - "Doctor Who: Partners in Crime"

I know you've been waiting for them as much as I have.

Series 4 of Doctor Who is admittedly a high water mark for the New Series as a whole. Not really a lot of bad episodes in Series 4, just a really badly blundered finale...and then the 2009 specials give us a rather pathetic, inappropriate, and depressing end to the character of the Tenth Doctor. Despite them not really being able to stick the landing, Series 4 probably has some of the strongest individual episodes we've seen in the Revived Series up to this point. Of course, that isn't as impressive when you realize what came before this were highlights such as:

• an alien special effects nightmare.
• farting aliens taking over the world through highly improbable Iraq War metaphors.
• Daleks being stuffed into a place to the brim that is then exploded.
  
• ...Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew EARTH.
  
• the fact that Love & Monsters didn't see Russell T. Davies sacked immediately by the BBC.
  
• the fact that Fear Her didn't see the entire production team sacked immediately by the BBC.
  
• Daleks being stuffed into a place to the brim that is then exploded 2: Electric Boogaloo.
  
• A man being shoved into a Dalek's ass (which is somehow more humiliating than the previous two Dalek mentions).
  
• Humans turning into cannibals with face-piercings and sharpened teeth in the future because...reasons?
  
• The only incarnation of the Master I've actually wanted to punch in the face.
  
• Psychic Jesus!
  
• Fat jokes and other assorted stupidity on the Titanic. IN SPAAAAACE!
  

So it's not to say that the bar is particularly hard to clear at this point in history. We have seen some stupid things in the three years we've gone over for the show.

All of this, by the way, without resurrecting the gag of the Rose Tyler being the worst, most awful companion ever devised by a Doctor Who writer. By the way, for anyone keeping score at home, we're at 10,111,272,574 as of the last appearance of the counter. Will it show up again in Series 4? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Now, though, we can begin Series 4 proper with "Partners In Crime". When Catherine Tate was announced as the new companion before the Series premiered, I know there was a wave of dislike among the fanbase given the incredibly over the top ridiculousness of The Runaway Bride two years earlier. I have to admit, back in 2008, even I was skeptical. How wrong I was...how wrong we all were who didn't believe. I have said before that I rarely give Russell T. Davies credit, as he spends so much time doing so much that irks me to no end.

This, though...the story of Donna Noble...it almost makes up for it.

Almost. It doesn't work that well, Rose Tyler fans. The only way my heart is growing three sizes in relation to Rose Tyler is if I'm about to have a coronary.

Yet another "thing that goes ding when there's stuff"

ANYWAY, on to Partners in Crime at long last. We begin with both the Doctor and Donna Noble investigating a weight loss company called Adipose Industries. Donna shows herself early on in these scenes to be incredibly competent at the work, showing some funneling of her formerly very brash and overbearing persona into the ability to con and fast talk in order to get information she wants for her investigation. The Doctor does the same, though with the usual methods such as the psychic paper and...the psychic paper.

We some "whacky hijinks" as they two narrowly miss meeting one another once again. Both of them receive a list of clients who have taken the drug and both investigate. The Doctor finds a neurotic man who has lost fourteen kilos...and he's noticed that he seems to have lost one every night since he started. Strangely, too, his burglar alarm always goes off at ten past one in the morning. He points out the cat flap at the front door, and the Doctor quotes Adipose's motto: "the fat just walks away".

Donna meanwhile, is speaking to a young woman who has lost eleven pounds and is dumping her significant other seeing as she can do better. She's said she feels great, never better. When she goes to the bathroom to get ready for her date, Donna starts playing with a golden necklace she received from Adipose...and something strange starts happening to the woman: the fat on her body starts to move and pull away from her body in a surprising show of Body Horror. Ms. Foster, the head of Adipose, sends out a "collection team" after picking up the event on her computer.

Hello! Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Meat Loaf?

It comes out as a little white, blobby thing...and because she witnessed it, Ms. Foster activates "full parthenogenesis. The woman is then completely consumed to create more of the creatures, leaving Donna to find her clothes left on the floor and one of the last of the creatures - the Adipose - waving to her cheekily as it escapes through an open window, much to her awe and confusion.

The Doctor, meanwhile, tracks the event on a device that looks like he pulled the Flux Capacitor right out of the DeLorean. He is unable to catch up to the van from Adipose Industries that comes by and loses them in the streets. Donna is likewise left in the dust, though Donna does speak to the cabbie that was coming for the woman she was speaking to. This has nothing to do with the episode itself, but I did notice on this watchthrough an "ATMOS" sticker on the windshield of the cab...clever, clever...

Ms. Foster looks over the security footage from earlier, seeing the Doctor and Donna on it and insisting that someone there was a thief who stole one of the gold pendants...and we're led to believe that she's referring to Donna, but more on that in a bit.

Donna returns home to her shrewish mother, who berates her for not having a job and not having plans in a way that feels uncomfortably close to a reality I once knew. The time-lapse of Sylvia going to different places in the kitchen while Donna sits with a cup of tea, unmoving, is very effective in showing the complete monotony that Donna's "normal" life has become. She inquires about her grandfather, and Sylvia points her to "up the hill".

Wilf is playing with a telescope and, after showing her the planet Venus, he gets asked by Donna if he's ever seen a little blue box. He hasn't, but it's a good set up for something a little bit later. Yes, Donna is and has been looking for the Doctor, apparently having some regrets about having turned down his offer to travel with him during the events of The Runaway Bride.

Also, Bernard Cribbins was brought in as Donna's grandfather (essentially retconning his character from Voyage of the Damned) due to the unfortunate passing of actor Howard Attfield, who had played Donna's father in The Runaway Bride and was to have done so for Series 4. This said, the scenes that Bernard Cribbins and Catherine Tate share are fantastic, the two have perfect chemistry as relatives and if you didn't know about the change up, you might never guess it had happened at all. In contrast to Sylvia, Wilf encourages and inspires. I like it.

On the other half of our coin for the episode, the Doctor is analyzing an Adipose device and talking as though someone is there...and a panning shot across the interior of the TARDIS reminds us that the Doctor is, in fact, alone. David Tennant absolutely sells the stoic approach the Doctor takes to hide his pain, hands in the pockets of his suit as he stares off, the TARDIS gently humming beneath his feet as it's the only way she could comfort her thief as he grieves.

The next morning, both the Doctor and Donna move out - missing one another by seconds as they head back into Adipose. Donna waits in the women's restroom and, after an awkward and quick phone conversation with her mother about the car, Ms. Foster and two of her goons find...a woman from earlier who had had three lines of dialogue and apparently had also been investigating Adipose Industries. The Doctor and Donna each move to respective sides of Foster's office as she "interviews" the woman in question.

Foster gets the Bond villain monologue about her plan - she is an alien who traveled a great distance to find obesity on a scale necessary to draw fat from people to galvanize bodies. In this case, she came to the United Kingdom instead of America (not really sure why, honestly?). As they talk, Donna and the Doctor finally see each other. There's some mouthed dialogue and, as Donna gets through an explanation about what she's doing there, Foster sees them...and politely asks if she's interrupting their shtick with the plot.

An apt metaphor for a majority of the Russell T. Davies era if ever there was one.

The two escape and meet up in a stairwell with a hug and a joke about how the Doctor never changes. Donna tells the Doctor that she believes in it all now - everything from Bigfoot to the bees disappearing and has been poking around at suspicious and dangerous things looking for him.

By the way, the bees disappearing is finally proof definitively that Russell learned that you can have an arc and have it actually mean something.

Instead of, say, BAD WOLF.

Yes, I'm still on about that. It's been almost 20 years and it still doesn't make any sense!

Super Nanny from space actually managed to be somewhat intimidating.
...for about five minutes. 

The Doctor and Ms. Foster play dueling Sonic devices (Foster likewise able to pull the "no, wait, a sonic screwdriver really shouldn't be able to do that" trick as well) before the Doctor manages to save Donna and himself from a damaged skylift. Eventually, they have a showdown where the Doctor and Donna learn the truth behind Foster's plan - she's been hired by the Adiposian First Family to foster a new generation for them after they apparently lost their breeding planet.

Lost planet. Hmm...

The Doctor escapes by dividing by zero with two sonic devices, and he and Donna get to the basement to fiddle around with Foster's equipment. She, meanwhile, decides to induce labor - converting the first one million people into Adipose.

We get the Russell T. Davies prerequisite drama where Donna questions the Doctor about him being alone, and he tells her about Martha and admits that he basically destroyed her life but that she's "fine". Rose also gets brought up, as if Russell needed to counterbalance the goodness of Martha with Cockney Satan incarnate.

Donna also mentions that she was mad to turn down the offer to travel with the Doctor, which he apparently doesn't remember making, but asks about in such a way that Donna takes it as an invitation.

. . .okay, again, I love Donna. Just saying.

With the drama meter filled, though, Foster activates the machine. Across London, the fat starts walking away - literally. The streets of London (at least those from Cardiff that they redressed as the streets of London) are soon filled with tiny little blobs of fat with smiling, marketable faces. The Doctor attempts to override it using the technology in one of the capsules, but Foster puts the machine to full strength and he can't do it without a second one - how fortunate that Donna happens to have one as well.

So the people of London are a few pounds lighter, but luckily aren't being converted into Adipose down to the point of their hair, bones, and so on.

Also, EWWWWWW!

Foster is miffed over the whole thing, but the Nursery Ship soon arrives and they have 10,000 Adipose to deliver to it. This is topped off with a comedic scene of Wilf, at his telescope, hearing loud music and not seeing the gigantic spaceship directly behind him. Back in the basement, a signal comes in from the Adiposian First Family, which the Doctor hears and realizes that something is up...

Foster, meanwhile, encourages the children to fly as the ship starts taking them up. Rushing to the roof, Donna asks the Doctor if he intends to blow them up - the Doctor refutes this, they're just children after all. Donna says Martha must have done him good...and then teases him upon hearing that Martha fancied him. Foster is brought up into the beam and the Doctor attempts to get her to come out of it, having told her before that seeding a Level 5 planet was against galactic law according to the Shadow Proclamation.

Foster doesn't believe she's in any danger...after all, she's the nanny. Just after the Doctor points out that the parents have the kids and don't need the nanny anymore...she meets gravity.

The nursery ship flies away, the Doctor chucks Foster's sonic device into the trash in disgust. The journalist from earlier, having now been tied to a chair twice, threatens to report the Doctor and Donna for madness. The two of them, not moved by it, head off to the TARDIS...or rather, Donna does while dragging the Doctor along. Donna is enthused, giddy about the TARDIS being parked so close to her car and showing that she's been prepared by having everything packed just in case and talking at the speed of light about everything that crosses her mind about traveling.

The Doctor is a bit tense, telling Donna a bit more about Martha...and making it clear that he just wants a mate. Following the comic approach of the episode, Donna misinterprets him wanting "to mate" until he elaborates and the dynamic is clear: they are friends, and nothing more - which is 1000% what the show needed four seasons ago, but never mind.

Donna remembers the car keys and hides them in a bin for her mother after phoning her. She informs a woman at the police barricade about the whereabouts of her mother's keys and...

...ooooh, boy...

. . .in an actual surprising twist for the time, as nobody had heard anything of it before it aired (which is a rare occurrence for the rumor mill of modern Doctor Who), Rose turns to the camera and sighs before walking away...seemingly fading out of existence entirely after Donna leaves. Donna enters the TARDIS and tells the Doctor she knows just the place she wants to go...

Wilf is drinking a cup of tea when he sees the TARDIS through the telescope and starts shouting for Donna just as she asked...only to see her and the Doctor waving from within the TARDIS. Wilf leaps for joy as Donna's quest to find the Doctor is finally over...but her adventures in time and space are just beginning!

Miles to go...little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0.
. . .oh, wait, that's the wrong show...

Minor gripes aside, as I said before, Partners in Crime is one of many very solid episodes of Series 4. David Tennant and Catherine Tate showcase here what we'll be seeing through the rest of the Series - namely wonderful, crackling chemistry. Donna is, in my mind, the perfect companion for the Tenth Doctor. Taking after Wilf, she helps and encourages but also takes from Sylvia in that she doesn't allow the Doctor to wallow in his self-pity and helps him through his darker moments...albeit in a far more tactful way than Sylvia does her. If only just.

Partners in Crime was the shot in the arm the show needed after heavier episodes (or at least, episodes that were intending to be heavier) like the Master three-parter in Series 3 and Voyage of the Damned. This does get exasperating in spots (in particular Ms. Foster's death scene having all the comedic trappings apart from the "splat" that comes after a fall as though someone smashed a melon against the ground instead of a person from several stories up), but not so much that it completely ruins the whole. It's probably one of the better things that Russell has written for the show, although he still really hasn't learned to balance the drama and the sci-fi elements when appropriate.

Next time, we head to Pompeii...and it's volcano day!

I don't own Doctor Who, pretty sure that's obvious by now.