The Lazarus Experiment [TV/2007.5.5]

★★★☆☆

  Imagine how surprised I was when the Lazarus monster ended up aging much better than I expected. I mean, look at that thing. It's genuinely creepy; it's got a bit of the uncanny valley as well with Mark Gatiss' face superimposed on a CGI model of a monster's facial structure, and the general graphics have surprisingly stood the test of time. It's not like they were exactly subtle with it either, with the giant size of the thing and the legs, stingers and splitting mouths... it's the sign of a production team letting their imagination run wild and come up with the most hideous mishmash of monster tropes this side of BBC1. It's certainly the visually memorable "big bad (emphasis on big this time)" of Series 3, if nothing else.

  It's not to say, of course, that the monster's the only merit this episode has. The Lazarus Experiment has quite a few goodies in store for viewers: a development of the Doctor/Martha relationship, a more detailed look at how the Jones family works and how Martha's mum cares about her daughter deeply (and therefore suspects and distrusts the Doctor), a decent setup for the series' big bad Harold Saxon, plus a really compact and well done monster tale. Humanity really should reel it in with all this tinkering with natural causality by now; every single time we try to defy our genetic codes, we always muck something up and either bring in alien invaders or become monsters! Thankfully, in the world of Dr. Who, the Doctor's always there to save the day; David Tennant is fully confident as always, being quick on his feet and spry, an action man without the guns and running on brainpower. There's a nice touch to his performance in Series 3, when he cuts back on the loony business in his debut series just a little bit and adds a touch of the morose, the more reflective side of the Tenth Doctor coming out so beautifully. I think it works rather well with Freema Agyeman's character as well, who gets to be incredibly good on her own and resourceful as well. The 45 minutes fly by with such a compact, interesting script brought to life with quite a bit of class. Justice for the Mark Gatiss monster!