History Recap / DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars

* SpiritualAntithesis: To "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresOfPompeii The Fires of Pompeii]]". Leaving aside the [[FireWaterJuxtaposition juxtaposed titles and monsters]], both stories are about the Doctor traveling to the eve of a world-famous tragedy that's a fixed point in time, which makes him feel helpless to save anyone -- although instead of a past event which actually happened, in this instance it's a fictionalized historical event that happens in the future -- and both stories end with the Doctor finding a way to at least saved the episode's main one-shot characters anyway. However, "The Fires of Pompeii" ended with the Doctor taking a third option where he managed to at least save ''some'' people ''without'' disrupting history per Donna's encouragement, making him acknowledge that he does indeed need people like her to travel with him and keep him good -- in "The Waters of Mars" on the other hand, the Doctor is alone again, and so he forces himself to walk away and abandon the people doomed to die despite his own protective instincts running counter to that, until he snaps and he basically takes a shit on destiny's desk in order to force the cast's salvation at the price of the power going to his head. Additionally, whereas "Fires" saw the Doctor outright ''cause'' the tragedy in order to stop the MonsterOfTheWeek destroying humanity, in "Waters", the Flood's efforts to invade Earth are prevented regardless of the Doctor's action or inaction.

[[caption-width-right:350:Behold: [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySloper the Time Lord Victorious.]]]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Behold: the Time Lord Victorious.]]

JustForFun/{{The one w|ith}}here the Doctor goes too far...and gets quite frightening.

Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. They begin to change, and his face gleams with horror. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor breaks, [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if this is when he's supposed to die.

Ood Sigma simply vanishes, leaving a distressed and panicked Doctor to dash into the TARDIS and lock the door behind him. The Cloister Bell begins to go off, but the Doctor declares "no" and valiantly throws himself into his final episode.

'''Original air date:''' November 15, 2009

'''Production code:''' 4.16

Written by Creator/RussellTDavies and Phil Ford.

At the ice cap water extraction dome, the Doctor and Adelaide look out over a rather impressive ice cap while the Doctor rambles about [[ContinuityNod some old enemies of his]] -- the Ice Warriors. Adelaide begins to question the Doctor about why he's so eager to leave and how he knows so much about the Mars colony. The Doctor explains that this is a "fixed point in time", confusing the hell out of Adelaide for a few moments before the Doctor quickly changes the subject to ''why'' Adelaide came out into space: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth The Dalek Invasion of 2009]][[labelnote:*]]"Present day" episodes in the Russell T. Davies era were usually a year ahead of their broadcast dates. "The Stolen Earth" was broadcast in 2008 and set in 2009. http://tardis.wiki.com/wiki/21st_century_Dalek_invasion[[/labelnote]]. She looked into the eyestalk of a Dalek, it looked right back, and left her to live. Adelaide simply wished to follow that Dalek out again -- not to kill it, but to meet other creatures in peace.

At the ice cap water extraction dome, the Doctor and Adelaide look out over a rather impressive ice cap while the Doctor rambles about [[ContinuityNod some old enemies of his]] -- the Ice Warriors. Adelaide begins to question the Doctor about why he's so eager to leave and how he knows so much about the Mars colony. The Doctor explains that this is a "fixed point in time", confusing the hell out of Adelaide for a few moments before the Doctor quickly changes the subject to ''why'' Adelaide came out into space: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth The Dalek Invasion of 2009]][[labelnote:*]]"Present day" episodes in the Russell T. Davies era were usually a year ahead of their broadcast dates. "The Stolen Earth" was broadcast in 2008 and set in 2009. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/21st_century_Dalek_invasion[[/labelnote]]. She looked into the eyestalk of a Dalek, it looked right back, and left her to live. Adelaide simply wished to follow that Dalek out again -- not to kill it, but to meet other creatures in peace.

'''[[center:[[InMemoriam IN MEMORY OF]]\\
[[Creator/BarryLetts BARRY LETTS]]\\
1925 - 2009]]'''

->''"We're not just fighting the Flood... we're fighting time itself! '''And I'm gonna win!'''"''

[[caption-width-right:350:The Time Lord Victorious.]]

JustForFun/{{The one w|ith}}here the Doctor goes too far.

[[caption-width-right:350:The Time Lord Victorious]]

The Doctor thinks that the cutesy robot is rubbish (although robot ''dogs'' are cool, of course), but otherwise loves the base. It doesn't take long for the Doctor to realise exactly where he is, and ''when'': November 21[-[[superscript:st]]-], 2059. Captain Brooke and her crew are the first human colony on Mars. The Doctor is a huge fan of their trip, and as he rambles through their history while madly {{squee}}ing, we see flashbacks to a series of articles with obituaries. The crew will die here today. The Doctor knows it — and knows that he shouldn't interfere, because this is a tremendously important fixed point in time. He'll never know what kind of monster attacked them, but that's fine, and he'll just leave now.

They lock the two infected forms out of the main central dome. These water creatures, Maggie included, are demanding to go to Earth — where they can thrive in water. The Doctor raises up the question of who ''else'' is infected, if the virus/parasite/whatever isn't inside everyone else on the base already, as it thrives in the water and obviously came from the Martian water that everyone has been drinking. Adelaide goes off to check the ice cap on top of which the base is built, while the rest of the crew begin prepping for escape to Earth. The Doctor knows that he should be ''leaving'', but he decides to run off and join Adelaide instead, seeing as he can't leave without his spacesuit.

At the ice cap water extraction dome, the Doctor and Adelaide look out over a rather impressive ice cap while the Doctor rambles about [[ContinuityNod some old enemies of his]] — the Ice Warriors. Adelaide begins to question the Doctor about why he's so eager to leave and how he knows so much about the Mars colony. The Doctor explains that this is a "fixed point in time", confusing the hell out of Adelaide for a few moments before the Doctor quickly changes the subject to ''why'' Adelaide came out into space: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E12TheStolenEarth The Dalek Invasion of 2009]][[labelnote:*]]"Present day" episodes in the Russell T. Davies era were usually a year ahead of their broadcast dates. "The Stolen Earth" was broadcast in 2008 and set in 2009. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/21st_century_Dalek_invasion[[/labelnote]]. She looked into the eyestalk of a Dalek, it looked right back, and left her to live. Adelaide simply wished to follow that Dalek out again — not to kill it, but to meet other creatures in peace.

The Doctor rambles on about how awesome Adelaide's descendants will be, all inspired by her heroic journey to Mars, and how massively important they'll all be to the future of all time and space. More newspaper flashbacks. It freaks the hell out of Adelaide in general. In seconds, it's revealed that everyone else still alive doesn't have the virus — so it's time to start leaving!

The Doctor leaves solemnly, listening through his helmet to the attempts of the remaining crew to fight fate the best they can. He hears about the water seeping into the main control room, taking out another member of the crew. Yet another is infected as a single drop hits his face — and this one demands the crew leave him before he's infected. The pilot of the shuttle, Ed, is also infected — but [[HeroicSacrifice chooses to blow up the shuttle]] rather than let the Earth get infected. The resulting explosion traps our remaining three crew-members in a single storage room, and knocks the Doctor quite a good distance.

All looks grim for Adelaide, Yuri and Mia... until the Doctor walks into the storage room, shouting out orders like a maniac and trying to save those people he'd declared dead. Adelaide begins to panic, wondering why the Doctor is throwing his previous worries out the window. Almost foaming at the mouth, the Doctor launches into a speech about how there are laws of time, but he can warp them. He's safe, he knows it's not his time yet, because he'll be killed when someone knocks four times. So today, he's decided that as many people as possible are going to be safe too! The laws of time that were once enforced by a group of people — a group long since dead:

->'''The Doctor:''' Do you know who that leaves? ME!! It's taken me all these years to realise it, [[BadassBoast but all those laws of time are mine.]] '''[[BadassBoast And they will obey ME!!!]]'''

Adelaide believes that the Doctor's gone insane. [[SarcasmMode Gee, whatever gave her that idea?]] The Doctor declares he's also ''fighting time itself''. Not even close to giving up, the Doctor finds that robot buddy Gadget in storage and uses it to bring the TARDIS to him — even while Adelaide sets the base to self-destruct. With four seconds to go, the TARDIS begins to rematerialise. As it finishes, the countdown reaches zero, the base blows up and the TARDIS whisks everyone away.

The Doctor takes the survivors to Earth: same time, same day. Mia, unlike many companions of the past, ''utterly freaks out'' at the TARDIS itself and flees — Yuri running after her. The Doctor himself is all grins and smiles, proudly proclaiming how time now obeys him. In recognition of his new exalted status, he gives himself the new title of [[AGodAmI Time Lord Victorious]]. Not only did he save two of the "little people", but he also saved one of the "big ones".

Adelaide does not take this well, trying to reason with the Doctor — claiming that no one person should have so much power. However, she just cannot get through to him, as the Doctor is finally realising everything that he can do, all that he can accomplish. He can warp time, escape death, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking open up the door to Adelaide's home]].

This episode is considered one of the best in the Tenth Doctor's era, and played a key part in the story of ''[[Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse Time Lord Victorious]]'', a [[CrossThrough multi-platform event]] spanning the books, comics, a web series, the [[Radio/BigFinishDoctorWho audios]] and interactive experiences. For the Tenth Doctor this event takes place immediately after this episode and shows him continuing down the dark path he started while his [[Characters/DoctorWhoEighthDoctor Eighth]] and [[Characters/DoctorWhoNinthDoctor Ninth]] incarnations try to stop him.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Daleks will literally kill everything and anything in existence that is different to them if they can; however, messing with a fixed-point in time is something that not even ''they'' will do and thus a Dalek actually spares a young child — Adelaide — when it comes across her.

* AGodAmI: The Doctor starts thinking of himself as the Time Lord Victorious and talking in such a way that suggests he thinks all of time and space is going to bend to his will. For those who didn't get the point, bear in mind that the Doctor's comment about how the laws of Time will obey him is eerily similar to the Master's old CatchPhrase of "I am the Master, and you ''will'' obey me!"

** A subtle execution of the trope — but it certainly applies when the Doctor realises he changed nothing at all in the long run, in spite of his efforts.

* MeaningfulEcho: It's pretty clear how far off the deep end the Doctor's gone when he starts echoing the Master's CatchPhrase from the classic series.

** Averted — the second infectee immediately tells the others to leave him behind.

-->-- The Doctor begins JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope

** When the Doctor changes history, we see [[Film/BackToTheFuture news entries with changing text]]. Not to mention the [[Film/BackToTheFuture flaming tire tracks]].

%%* CuteMachines: Gadget

%%* TheDeterminator: Adelaide ''never'' snaps.

%%* UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}: The question of what happened to the water on Mars is pivotal to the plot.

%%* TeamMom: Adelaide to her crew.

** A man shocking his male lover by buying him a car as a surprise birthday present, now [[Series/QueerAsFolk where have we seen that before?]]