Day 743: The Poison Sky

"I've got to give them a choice"

Full disclosure: when preparing this blog, I will occasionally draw up vague plans in my head for what certain entries will be about. These plans, however, will often jump gleefully out of the window once I watch the episode and realise something far better to talk about. One such example is this entry, where I was planning to talk about the duality of the Sontarans and UNIT. But then I watched the above scene, and realised that it had to be about it.

It's a scene that crept up on me, because I wasn't expecting it to happen. The events leading up to it are about the Doctor planning to kill all the Sontarans, with a device that will destroy their atmosphere. The only problem is that he has to activate it manually. And when Martha asks the Doctor why he can't set it on a delay, I thought he was going to say that they'd find and defuse it. I didn't expect him to say the quote at the top of this entry. But, of course, it makes perfect sense that he would. He's the Doctor, a man who always seeks for the best way out of any given situation. Even consider The Fires of Pompeii, where he only erupts Vesuvius on the proviso that it will end up saving the entire world, although at the cost of Pompeii. It's a strong character beat, and sums up a lot of what the Doctor is about.

And then it gets even more interesting when he offers the choice to the Sontarans. He hadn't considered the fact that the Sontarans would be so one dimensional, and so he isn't able to have the debate that he was hoping to have, where he could perhaps convince General Staal to rescind the order to destroy the Earth. So the focus is turned entirely on the Doctor, where it's about whether he has the ability to press that button and kill the Sontarans. Unfortunately, the story prevents us from further dwelling on that question of whether he would have pressed that button, but it's an interesting moral quandary nonetheless, and provides a nice ending to a thoroughly decent story.