The Doctor's Daughter

Writer: Stephen Greenhorn
Director: Alice Troughton

Who is she?
Well she’s…she’s my daughter
Hello Dad!!

The out of control Tardis finally lands in a tunnel complex. Before The Doctor, Donna and Martha can explore very far a group of soldiers appears brandishing weapons and ordering the three of them to surrender.  The leader of the soldiers orders them to be taken for ‘processing’ starting with The Doctor.

The Doctor’s hand is forced into a machine which takes a tissue sample and then extrapolates that sample to create a new person. The girl who steps from the progenation machine is a fully trained and combat ready soldier – she is also, strictly speaking – The Doctor’s daughter!

The group come under attack from a species known as The Hath and during the gun battle that follows Martha is kidnapped by the Hath and dragged away into the tunnels. The human soldiers blow up the tunnel complex to stop the Hath attack, but this also prevents The Doctor from going after Martha.
The soldiers take The Doctor and Donna to their leader General Cobb and as they journey through the tunnel complex Donna tries to find out more about The Doctor’s ‘daughter’ and based on The Doctor’s own description of her as a ‘generated anomaly’ decides to call her Jenny. He is finding it hard to bond or become involved with what he considers to be nothing more than a biological accident. The soldiers tell him that the planet they are on is called Messaline and has been in a state of war for generations.

General Cobb believes that Donna and The Doctor are pacifists trying to end the war but tells them that he and his followers are committed to the total annihilation of the Hath. He tells them that once the humans and the Hath had lived together but then the Hath had tried to take control and war had broken out.
In the control room, Donna had noticed that although the rooms were underground they had been built with windows and under the window was a set of numbers stamped onto a plaque.

Martha has survived the collapse of the tunnel and has won the trust of the Hath by helping one of them who was injured. They have taken her to their headquarters were they are showing her a map of the tunnel complex.
In the human camp The Doctor is looking at the same map and uncovers a hidden layer of information which shows a further set of tunnels and a temple which Cobb believes could hold ‘the source’. He tells The Doctor that ‘the source’ has been on the planet since the dawn of time and that whoever possesses it will be victorious in the war. The Doctor vows to stop him from destroying the Hath but first they have to escape from the prison cell he puts them in.

In the cell Donna sees another set of numbers, similar but not identical to the ones in the main command centre and she is convinced that they must mean something. The Doctor is more concerned with stopping Cobb from finding whatever is in the temple. He upgrades Donna’s phone and calls Martha only to learn that due to him revealing the hidden tunnels on the map, the Hath are also on their way to the temple.
Jenny offers to help them get past the guard but The Doctor doesn’t trust her claiming that she is nothing more than a soldier from a machine. Donna makes him handover his stethoscope and listen to Jenny’s double heartbeats. Although he still tries to deny the fact that she is his daughter Jenny argues that the fact that The Doctor fought and killed in the Time War makes him the same as her.

In the prison cell, Jenny distracts the guard and they make their escape into the tunnels, where Martha sees more of the numbers stamped everywhere. The Doctor discovers the entrance to the hidden tunnels and they escape into them just ahead of Cobb and his army only to find their way blocked by a corridor filled with deadly laser beams. Whilst The Doctor disarms the beams  and flees down the corridor with Donna, Jenny holds off Cobb and his soldiers. She has the chance to kill Cobb but heeding The Doctor’s words that ‘you always have a choice’ she chooses not to kill him.

Martha and one of the Hath decide that the quickest way to reach the temple is to venture out onto the planets’ surface. During the journey Martha looses her footing and falls into a bed of quicksand. Unable to save her from the safety of the side, the Hath jumps into the quicksand and saves her but only at the expense of his own life.

Donna invites Jenny to travel with them and see new worlds and although The Doctor agrees he seems uncomfortable about her being with them. He tells Donna it is because he had been a father before and lost all his family. Jenny reminds him of all the things he lost and can never have again.

They finally reach the temple to discover that it houses a spaceship. The ship is still functional despite all the years that the planet has been at war.  Donna sees yet another set of numbers and these seem to be ‘live’. She realises that the numbers have been the dates when the parts of the complex were completed and that the one in the temple is today’s date. The planet has been at war for only seven days but because both sides can create many ‘generations’ of soldiers in one day the legend of war has quickly grown.

Martha has now reached the temple and is soon reunited with The Doctor. They locate ‘the source’ and The Doctor recognises it as a terra forming which was to have been used to transform the planet’s surface into a habitable environment before the war had broken out.

Suddenly they are surrounded by both Cobb’s men and the Hath army. The Doctor tells them that ‘the source’ is in fact NOT a weapon but a device to bring life and smashes the device on the floor, starting the terra forming process. Watching the planet start to transform all the human and Hath soldiers, except Cobb, lower their weapons and it would appear that at last the war is over. Cobb, a fanatic to the last, still considers The Doctor a threat and raises his gun to shoot him. Jenny, seeing what is happening steps in front of her father and is shot. Despite his pleas for her to regenerate she dies in his arms and the devastated Doctor grabs Cobb’s fallen gun and threatens to kill him. For a moment it appears that his rage and sorrow have got the better of him but then The Doctor lowers the gun and tells Cobb that he would never kill and that they should build their new civilisation based on that principle.

The Doctor takes Martha back to Earth, the adventures on Messaline have shown her that she no longer wants to travel with The Doctor a concept Donna finds hard to comprehend.

On Messaline the humans and the Hath are preparing Jenny for burial when she suddenly wakes up, runs to the spaceship and sets off to explore a whole universe of new worlds.

Written by Deryn Corner