Doctor Who Series 3 Episode 6 - The Lazarus Experiment - Review
Starring: David Tennant, Freema Agyeman, Gugu Mbatha-Raw & Mark Gatiss
Written By: Stephen Greenhorn
Directed By: Richard Clark
Seeing as we're nearly halfway through Series 3, let's take a brief moment to look at how it's been going so far. The opening episodes proved very good and solid, with Gridlock being the strongest episode so far. However, the past two weeks has seen something of a lull in quality for the series, with Daleks In Manhattan and Evolution Of The Daleks proving very disappointing. It seems Series 3 is in need of something to pick things back up again, so is The Lazarus Experiment up to the job?
The Doctor brings Martha back home, their trips in the TARDIS at an end. However, just as he's about to leave, the two see a news report where famous scientist Professor Lazarus announces he's about to change what it means to be human. Intrigued and worried, the Doctor decides to stick around and attend the party Lazarus is holding. When the 76 year-old scientist reinvigorates himself and makes himself younger it seems impossible, but in the process, Lazarus' genes mutate, transforming him into a monster...
While the mad scientist trope is a familiar one in Doctor Who, particularly during the Jon Pertwee years, it's been quite some time since it was this prevalent in an episode. The result is a decent forty-five minutes of entertainment. Here, the entire episode revolves around this trope, to the point where there's no alien threat this week, but just a scientist playing around dangerously with his own genetics. It references and borrows a lot from other material, both old and new, paying homage to movies like The Fly or Quatermass & The Pit. But even though there's plenty of parallels to classic B-movies, The Lazarus Experiment still feels quite timely, especially with the first Marvel films being released next year, which will likely feature some similar mad scientist tropes.
Unfortunately, there's little this episode has to offer outside of this concept. Centring an episode around just this one idea results in a very threadbare and empty story from Stephen Greenhorn, and there's barely any pacing or moving from one event to the other for me to speak of. Don't get me wrong, the main idea is entertaining and enjoyable, but with nothing else to accompany it, The Lazarus Experiment feels like our first throwaway and somewhat forgettable episode in the series so far. At the very least, if there had to be a throwaway episode this series, I applaud Stephen Greenhorn for keeping it absurd, enjoyable and straightforward, but I'm not sure if that should be a compliment or not.
However, I may be getting ahead of myself and there are still some other things to appreciate from this episode. After writing and contributing an episode for both of the previous two series, Mark Gatiss gets to act in Series 3 in the role of Professor Lazarus. His performance here is great and he's able to encompass everything that's required of his character, particularly his arrogance and at times, creepiness. He also gets some brilliantly-written scenes, especially with the Doctor. These often address the central message of this episode which is human mortality and that the extent to which we've lived our lives isn't determined by how many years we get, but what we do with them. The old age make-up used to age Mark Gatiss into the 76 year-old Lazarus also looks brilliant, and is one of this episode's best uses of practical effects. The majority of the budget for the computer effects in The Lazarus Experiment very clearly went into creating the Lazarus Creature... with mostly good results. The creature's body looks huge, mighty and powerful and interacts with its environment very well thanks to director Richard Clark, who has now twice shown this series that he can direct purely CGI creations seamlessly. What really lets it down though ... is the fact that they've tried to put Mark Gatiss' human face on it. Not only does it look nothing like him, but it looks so out of place on that body. The creature is already inhuman enough so a much better move would be to make the face non-human too. It's not quite as bad as the CGI used on Dwayne Johnson in The Mummy Returns, but it's not far off either.
A more successful point in this episode is the very welcome development given to Martha and her family. (Spoiler Warning!) I can't believe I'm saying it when we're nearly half-way through the series, but I'm so glad Martha's finally joined the TARDIS properly. I could understand and go along with the one-trip thing in the first two or three episodes of the series, but now that we're six in, Martha only just joining the TARDIS properly feels like we should have seen this weeks ago. Martha even points out just how ridiculous it was getting and I enjoyed seeing her stand up for herself. The rest of Martha's family make for some really great characters, particularly Tish. Both Freema Agyeman and Gugu Mbatha-Raw work really well together and share a terrific sisterly relationship, especially during the last fifteen minutes of the episode. Reggie Yates was a fun presence as Leo, and Adjoa Andoh was also just as good to watch as Francine as she was in Smith & Jones. Francine spends a lot of time in this episode getting hints and teases about the story arc for this series. Speaking of that story arc, it's noticeably stronger and more linked this year than it has been in the past two years, and I'm interested to know exactly who the mysterious Mr Saxon really is.
The Lazarus Experiment has a respectable amount of positives to take away from it, but it's sadly not the improvement in quality I'd hoped for following the Dalek two-parter. I honestly don't have much to say on this one, and I apologize for this review being shorter in length than usual. It's decent enough and can make for a fun distraction when playing in the background, but it isn't anything that's about to go down as a classic in the show's history, and isn't one that's likely to stick out when many people look back on this series.
The Lazarus Experiment
6/10