2009′s been a quiet time for Doctor Who fans, with hour-long specials only appearing on the big calendar events of the year: Christmas, New Year, Easter and, er, halfway through November. It’s been an especially long wait for “The Waters of Mars,” which (with Merlin and Strictly occupying its usual Saturday night spot) finally arrives tonight. The year is 2059, the location the Bowie One colony on Mars, and the villain is the water supply which, as The Doctor tells us in the trailers, “is patient” and “always wins.”
With only three more episodes before the end of the Davies/Tennant era, this is being plugged as the leadup to Ten’s demise. We’re promised a particularly dark, death-obsessed story, with the Radio Times going so far as to call it “harrowing.” Russell T Davies has teamed up with Sarah Jane Adventures writer Phil Ford to challenge his successor’s reputation as the scariest Doctor Who writer and it’s fair to say the LC Forum users are excited about the preview clips we’ve seen so far. And it doesn’t hurt that Lindsay Duncan is the one-off companion, as the ball-breaking leader of the Mars expedition. Let’s hope this is the start of a fittingly explosive end for the Tenth Doctor.
- Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars, 7pm, BBC1
