The Lazarus Experiment

I wasn't particularly looking forward to this episode to be honest: all-too-obvious mad scientist plot with all-too-obviously named professor, return to Earth, reappearance of plastic Martha's plastic family, CGI monster and so on. All the ingredients for the kind of irritation, boredom and cringing I normally experience during your average New Who episode.

But I was pleasantly surprised by The Lazarus Experiment. Of course it still had token annoyances which have become something of the RTD production-tradition now, but this particular story managed to rise above such irritant factors due to a general seriousness of tone and a well-articulated - albeit not entirely original - plotline.

From the outset, boundaries were being put down by the maturing Doctor towards his latest and rather simpering companion, Martha: for once we had a reason, more like the old days, for the Doctor to return his companion to her time on Earth: he wanted to call it a day and put her back we he found her. And who can blame him? Martha is even more insipid than Rose, but seemingly lacking the latter's attempt at a personality. Martha seems to have none at all. Her fancying the Doctor just seems substanceless and token in its doe-eyed vapidness. There's no chemistry at all anyway. So I thanked God that the Doctor started this episode further emphasising his emotional detachment from her. If only she hadn't hopped back on at the end (but that was his fault admittedly).

This scene also adds a welcoming touch of alienness and detachment to the rather erratically scripted 10th Doctor, and this is greatly welcome. This slightly restless and solipsistic slant on Tennat's incarnation is also nicely reminiscent of early Pertwee's misanthropic fuss-pot of a Doctor, who had childish tantrums whenever his attempts to regain control of the TARDIS for purposes of self-centred escape from his rather mundane UNIT trappings backfired.

This is, in many other ways, very much Pertwee-era territory (sonic screwdriver aside): the 10th Doctor, just like his ever doomwatching 3rd incarnation, pops along - in tuxedo too - to witness the latest amoral experiment turning heads in the human scientific community. In this sense this episode is very reminiscent of the enthralling thriller of Season 8, The Mind of Evil. We also have the ultimate fan reference to the 3rd Doctor: 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow'.

What I liked the most about this episode wasn't the plot itself, but certain concepts and chunks of explanatory monologue from the Doctor, which added real leaven to what could have otherwise degenerated into a facile run-around. The suggestion that the regenerative process of Lazarus's machine should produce an atavistic reaction in the human body, tapping in to an evolutionary cul-de-sac wherein our genes still contain an aborted DNA chain which could have led us to evolve into scorpion-like insects rather than apes (and then humans), was the stuff of classic Who, and really did add terror to an otherwise ambitious but only half-convincing CGI monstrosity (the body was good, but the air-brushed-on face really didn't work for me, and just looked like a computer graphic, and also not remotely like Gatiss himself) - I think CGI should be scrapped entirely now, and more tangible model work should be employed: the similar man-headed spider creature in the Eighties version of The Thing for me is far more convincing than The Mill's efforts nearly a quarter of a century later.

But what really carries this story is the consumate performance from Mark Gatiss in the title role. In Professor Lazarus, we have, in my mind, the first really charismatic and affecting foil for the Doctor since the new series began. The character is in some ways reminiscent of Julian Glover's immortal turn as Count Scarlioni in the classic City of Death. And of course Gatiss is well aware of his classic lineage in this regard being an out-of-the-closet Whovian himself. He pulled out all the acting stops in this episode, in quite the opposite fashion to how 'Trigger' pushed them all into ham as Lumik in Risable of the Cybermen last year. Gatiss shows how a Who villain should be done: with suave menace and a subtle hint of self-torment. But where Gatiss's performance, and indeed the entire episode, really comes into its own, is during the cathedral scene, as Lazarus cowers in mutating pain naked in a red towel on the flagstones, in a battle of philosophies with the Doctor. This scene was exceptionally well-directed and acted: darkly, subtly, but above all, dramatically. This scene also reminded me a bit of the 5th Doctor's final confrontation with the mutating Omega at the end of Arc of Infinity (and is it just me, or does the young Gatiss bear a vague facial resemblance to Peter Davison?). During this scene also, there is a pivotal and highly resonant retort from Lazarus to the Doctor's comparatively superficial observation of how 'facing up to death is part of being human' - which of course is imutably true; but Lazarus comes back with an equal truism about our contradictory condition: that it is also our instinct to 'cling to life with every fibre of our being' (sic). Even the goggle-eyed 10th Doctor seems struck dumb by this statemtent. Excellent scripting. Here then we have a tale suitably grisly and morally-disturbing as its obvious literary influence, Dorian Grey.

The only trouble that crops up here is that Gatiss frankly steals this episode from Tennant - and though Tennant strains to rise to the occasion - and doesn't do too badly in places -there is no doubting in my mind that this was one occasion, and actually probably only the third of three occasions for me in the show's history, when an incidental actor in a Who story seemed to have 'Obvious Doctor material' stamped all over him in comparison to the current incumbent (the other two occasions for me were Paul Shelley opposite Davison in Four to Doomsday, and David Collings opposite Davison (again, sorry Peter) in Mawdryn Undead). I know Gatiss has long nursed a fantasy of one day playing the lead - partly pampered to in his comedic cameos in the 30th Who anniversary documentary), and this is a potential I haven't been convinced of myself previously. However, on the basis of his turn in this episode, I did feel instinctively that he was more obvious Doctor material than Tennant. In his very RP, throaty delivery of lines, Gatiss oozed the kind of old-style theatrical gravitas that has so long been missing from the Timelord's interpretations. As the young Lazarus, I detected also a passing resemblance to the young Derek Jacobi (turning up of course soon in Utopia, which is tops with me, being a massive fan of I,Claudius, especially of Jacobi's eponymous performance).

The musical extermination of the Lazarus monster was indeed 'inspired' as the Doctor put it - and the sight of him grinding away at the church organ as a means to defeating one of his foes has to surely be one of the most, well, artistic ways in which the Timelord has ever won the day. Definitely inspired.

Subtle hints at the inevitable identity of the mysterious Mr Harold Saxon aside, the other key factor of this episode which I think deserves particular mention and praise, is that for practically the first time since new Who began, we have the Doctor finally using a more erudite and profound cultural reference properly befitting the drama of the occasion than bathetic trendy allusions to Kylie Minogue lyrics or third-rate Eighties films: 'not with a bang but a wimper - Eliot. I also liked the subtlety here of saying 'Eliot' rather than 'T.S. Eliot' - not even spelling it out. This was a truly welcome return to the more profound and poetic days of the glowering 4th Doctor (cue his tendency to quote poetry, as in The Face of Evil and at the end of Horror of Fang Rock). Again, brilliant scripting. And what a polar contrast to the usual contemporary cultural allusions.

To sum up then, this episode certainly didn't go out with a wimper, as I was starting to suspect it might about 10 minutes before its end, with a red-herring conclusion of Lazarus being stretchered away in an ambulance - but the episode hit back with a real vengeance and a philosophically challenging denouement which in itself (that cathedral scene) will, to my mind, go down as a classic moment in the series (both old and new).

Like Gridlock, another pleasant surprise of an episode, The Lazarus Experiment continues to show how unpredictable this season is turning out to be. This is not necessarily a classic story, but it certainly contains some unexpectedly classic moments, which is the next best thing. Mr Gatiss, I'd hand you the keys to the TARDIS any time.

7/10.