History Recap / DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars

* KnightTemplar: The Doctor declares that he is the master of Time and he can do whatever he want to make history go the way he wants so he can save whoever he wants. You don't like it? "Tough".

* MoraltyAdjustment: The Doctor briefly becomes a KnightTemplar, declaring that he can do whatever he wants with the Laws of Time in name of saving whoever he wants. Maggie straight up calls him a power-mad despot.

** The biggest one is at the end, though: the Doctor, on his way back to the TARDIS, pretty much loses it when he realises Adelaide has killed herself.
** And one last one when the cloister bell goes off.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Both Doctor and Adelaide.

* FaceHeelTurn: The Doctor briefly becomes a KnightTemplar, declaring that he can do whatever he wants with the Laws of Time in name of saving whoever he wants. Maggie straight up calls him a power-mad despot.

* InMemoriam: To long-time ''Who'' alum [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Letts Barry Letts]].[[note]]He worked on the TV series from 1967 until 1981, and wrote radio plays and novels in the 1990s and 2000s. He was pretty much ''the'' guy who chose Creator/TomBaker to be the Fourth Doctor.[[/note]]

* DoNotGoGentle: The Doctor!
* DugTooDeep: There was something living in the ice that the team dug up for drinking water.

* TheVirus: The Flood.
* WaterSourceTampering: Turned UpToEleven with the aliens ''in'' the water.
* WhatTheHellHero: The Doctor himself is called out on this by Adelaide. Several times.
* WorldOfCardboardSpeech
* TheXOfY
* YouCantFightFate / ScrewDestiny: Played with in pretty much every way possible.

* ZombieInfectee: Averted -- the infectee immediately tells the others to leave him behind.
** Well, the second one does. The first one, implied to be under the control of the water, gets inside the base ([[CardboardPrison and into a rather lacking quarantine room]]) before showing her GameFace.

And, indeed, people go missing. One by the name of Andy is already dead. Another, Maggie, is found conked on the head and taken off to the medical dome. The Doctor should leave now. But he lets himself be roped into the investigation by Adelaide, into the Bio Sphere, joined by [[RedShirt Expendable Crewman]] Tarak. Within a good few minutes, Tarak is separated from the Doctor and finds what appears to be Andy... water flowing off of Andy like he's a theme park ride. Andy's face is distorted, cracked and gushing water.

They lock the two infected forms out of the main central dome. These water creatures, Maggie included, are demanding to go to Earth -- where they can thrive in water. The Doctor raises up the question of who ''else'' is infected, if the virus/parasite/whatever isn't inside everyone else on the base already, as it thrives in the water and obviously came from the Martian water that everyone has been drinking. Adelaide goes off to check the ice cap on top of which the base is built, while the rest of the crew begin prepping for escape to Earth. The Doctor knows that he should be ''leaving''. But he decides to run off and join Adelaide instead, seeing as he can't leave without his spacesuit.

The Doctor rambles on about how awesome Adelaide's descendants will be, all inspired by her heroic journey to Mars. And how massively important they'll all be to the future of all time and space. More newspaper flashbacks. It freaks the hell out of Adelaide in general. In seconds, though, it's revealed that everyone else still alive doesn't have the virus -- so it's time to start leaving!

...or it would be, if the infected bodies that were once Andy and Tarak didn't somehow climb up on top of the central command building to start spewing water everywhere.

The Doctor, now with space suit, finally starts to leave. But Adelaide refuses to open up the airlock hatch until the Doctor explains why he's being so... awkward around everyone. He explains it all for us (and Adelaide): ''this very day'' is the day that Bowie Base One is destroyed with all hands lost. Adelaide's heroic death is what will inspire her descendants and what will propel humanity into interstellar travel. It has to happen.

All looks grim for Adelaide, Yuri and Mia... until the Doctor walks into the storage room, shouting out orders like a maniac and trying to save those people he'd declared dead. Adelaide begins to panic, wondering why the Doctor is throwing his previous worries out the window. Almost foaming at the mouth, the Doctor launches into a speech about how there are laws of time. But he can warp them. And he's safe, he knows it's not his time yet, because he'll be killed when someone knocks four times. So today, he's decided that EverybodyLives. The laws of time that were once enforced by a group of people -- a group long since dead...

Adelaide, reasonably enough, believes that the Doctor's gone insane. The Doctor declares he's also ''fighting time itself''. Not even close to giving up, the Doctor finds that robot buddy Gadget in storage and uses it to bring the TARDIS to him -- even while Adelaide sets the base to self-destruct. With four seconds to go, the TARDIS begins to re-materialise. As it finishes, the countdown reaches zero...

...but everyone left actually ''survives'', as the TARDIS arrived just in time. The Doctor takes the survivors to Earth: same time, same day. Mia, unlike many companions of the past, ''utterly freaks out'' at the TARDIS itself and flees -- Yuri running after her. The Doctor himself is all grins and smiles, proudly proclaiming how time now obeys him. He give himself the new title of [[AGodAmI Time Lord Victorious]]. Not only did he save two of the "little people", but he also saved one of the "big ones".

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. They begin to change, and his face gleams with horror. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if this is when he's supposed to die.

* TheAestheticsOfTechnology: Although the Doctor is using a spacesuit from humanity's future, it doesn't look like it, making the comment on its advanced technology a bit odd. Presumably because its more lightweight and noticeably less bulky than the suits they are using, which may be why they wonder where it came from.

** The Doctor is also wearing the spacesuit from Sanctuary Base 6, as seen in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E8TheImpossiblePlanet "The Impossible Planet"]].

** In particular, the Doctor's mention of the Ice Warriors -- notably, the humans regard the idea of a sentient race once living on Mars with scepticism.

* DangerTakesABackSeat: How Ed and the shuttle are lost.
* {{Deconstruction}}: The ending essentially deconstructs the Doctor himself and the mythology surrounding him. As with pretty much every episode ever, he saves the day, does the impossible, gets a little bit smug about it afterwards and all in all lives up to titles like the "Lonely God" -- and far from being charming and admirable, it's creepy and unsettling, because he's also in the process of completely losing touch with the "little people" surrounding him as a result.

* DwindlingParty: Until only three of the crew are left.
* EldritchAbomination: Via [[OurZombiesAredifferent parasites in the Martian water that turn people into craggy, water-spewing zombies]]. With unholy screams that can free the ''real'' EldritchAbomination hiding deep within the ice.

* FaceHeelTurn: The Doctor briefly becomes a KnightTemplar. And boy, ''it's the most terrifying thing in the episode, which is not a piece of cake either.''
* FaceRevealingTurn: Played straight this time, the background music swells as Tarak approaches the now-infected Andy and he turns his face to the camera.
* ForegoneConclusion: You are told upon meeting the supporting characters that they all die. ''Today''. [[OhCrap Yeah]].

** During his AGodAmI stage, the Doctor starts acting like the Time Lords who appear two episodes later (same ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem personality).
** Also during his brief reign of terror, he uses some of the Master's quotes. Guess who also shows up in the next episode?

* ForgotICouldChangeTheRules: Inverted/deconstructed. The Doctor really ''can't'' change the rules, at least not without causing seven kinds of hell to break loose, but he temporarily forgets this.

* ForWantOfANail: Everything could have been avoided by filtering the water. In fact, they were filtering the water, but it turns out the spares they brought along didn't fit, and one of the filters failed just before this all started.

* AGodAmI: The Doctor seems to be resembling the Master more at this point. A much ''nicer'' Master, to be sure, but still far darker and morally questionable than before. He also starts thinking of himself as the Time Lord Victorious and talking in such a way that suggests he thinks all of time and space is going to bend to his will. For those who didn't get the point, bear in mind that the Doctor's comment about how the laws of Time will obey him is eerily similar to the Master's old CatchPhrase of "I am the Master, and you will obey me!".

** Arguably what happened to Adelaide Brooke as well. Despite what the entry below says, maybe she wasn't a HeroicSacrifice at all; maybe she just freaked out at the thought of a sappy eccentric guy playing God and saving peoples' lives based on simply whether they are important or not....
** The Doctor makes things worse. He not only didn't save Adelaide, her granddaughter is now famous for trying to puzzle out why Adelaide killed herself, rather than why she merely died.

** One played straight, one subverted in that the sacrifice wasn't to prevent something from happening, but to keep the time-line intact... or is it, considering that Adelaide's death was changed from a straight sacrifice on Mars to suicide on Earth? It could also be interpreted as heroically sacrificing herself to save the world from the horrors of the Time Lord Victorious.
** Ed, who detonates the rocket to stop the Flood from reaching Earth when he realises that it's on board and has infected him.

* InformedAbility: While the off-screen sprays of water are obviously damned powerful, the on-screen water sprays don't even look like they get close to the power of a fire hose. Still looks damned creepy, though. [[RealityIsUnrealistic The water sprays were actually made by fire hoses.]]

* KillEmAll: A ForegoneConclusion. Which is then subverted, when the Doctor saves three of them! Yes, Adelaide kills herself, but Yuri and Mia are still alive at the end.
* KnightTemplar: The Doctor becomes this for the laws of time. It doesn't end well.
* LargeHam: Tennant. You'll know it when you see it.

* OmniscientMoralityLicense: Deconstructed. The Doctor becomes so overwrought with the guilt and fear that everyone is supposed to die in the expedition that he ''snaps'' and saves the three remaining members whom ''he himself'' categorises as two "little people" plus one "big person". The Doctor declares himself "[[AGodAmI Time Lord Victorious]]", and says there's nothing anyone can do to stop him. Until Adelaide, who is, quite frankly, disgusted with this notion (and rightly so) ''does'' manage to stop him by committing suicide, ensuring that her descendants lead the human race outside the cosmos, and the timeline is somewhat fixed. It took this to realise The Doctor's hubris had ''[[MyGodWhatHaveIDone completely]]'' [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone got the better of him]].

** Adelaide actually paying someone a compliment is noted to be a bad sign.

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: See the entry for EldritchAbomination, above.

* RobotBuddy: Gadget

** The Doctor's insistence that they should have brought bikes. Also a LampshadeHanging on the amount of running that goes on in this show.

* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: Sums up the Doctor's speech.
* SealedEvilInACan: Humans accidentally released Sealed Evil in a Glacier.
* SelfDeprecation: Again, the Doctor [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion "doesn't like funny robots".]] He does avoid self-deprecation later on by saying that robot dogs are different, making it closer to HypocriticalHumor.

** Possibly unintentional, but the horrific alien zombie virus is called [[Franchise/{{Halo}} the Flood]].

* SilentAntagonist: The flood only says a few brief lines very early on. From then on, the victims don't say a word.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Good work telling Adelaide what her death would cause, Doctor. If he'd kept his mouth shut, she wouldn't have killed herself to maintain the old timeline.

* NoOSHACompliance: Whoever decided that a room that was meant to ''Quarantine'' people should have a ''basic'' seal and not a Hardinger Seal clearly didn't understand why an unbreakable seal would help to keep something ''contained''.
** They did recognize the risk of water contamination and included filtration, but they packed the wrong filters for the water system.

->''"We're not just fighting flood... we're fighting time itself! '''[[BadassBoast And I'm gonna win!]]'''"''

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. They begin to change, and his face gleams with horror. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. They all change, and his face gleams with horror. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. They change, and his face gleams with horror. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. They change, and his face shines with horror. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of reading about Adelaide's once noble death, and that of the two crew members who originally didn't make it. His fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice have been rewritten... for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. Thoughts flash through the Doctor's head of Adelaide's once noble death and his fond memories of Bowie Base One's sacrifice... being rewritten for the ''worse''. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

Adelaide simply glares at the Doctor and enters her own home. A blue flash through her windows [[HeroicSacrifice makes it perfectly clear what she did]]. The Doctor [[GoMadFromTheRevelation breaks]], [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone realising that he's gone too far]]. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E3PlanetOfTheOod Ood Sigma]] appears for a moment, and the Doctor questions him, wondering if is when he's supposed to die.

->'''The Doctor:''' Do you know who that leaves? ME!! It's taken me all these years to realise it, but all those laws of time are mine. '''And they will obey ME!!!'''

** To [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresOfPompeii "The Fires of Pompeii"]], the last time fixed points in time were mentioned. He also used the TARDIS to save a couple of people at the last minute in that episode, although this time it is ''not'' shown as a good thing.

* ChekhovsGun: The Gadget robot.

** In particular, the Doctor's mention of the Ice Warriors -- notably the humans regard the idea of a sentient race once living on Mars with scepticism.
** And the Doctor mentions what happened [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresofPompeii the last time]] he tried changing a "fixed point" in time.

* CreatorProvincialism: Averted for once; while there seem to be a disproportionate number of Britons around, there is a realistic international representation including the major space powers of the United States and Russia. Many countries that are currently not too important on the world stage are described as being major powers after an "oil apocalypse" which is never really explained (it only gets a brief mention from Adelaide in which she describes that the human race was almost wiped out). Two of these are Spain and the Philippines.
* CuteMachines: Gadget

* {{Deconstruction}}: The ending essentially deconstructs the Doctor himself and the mythology surrounding him. As with pretty much every episode ever he saves the day, does the impossible, gets a little bit smug about it afterwards and all in all lives up to titles like the "Lonely God" -- and far from being charming and admirable it's creepy and unsettling, because he's also in the process of completely losing touch with the "little people" surrounding him as a result.

* DugTooDeep: There was something living in the ice that the the team dug up for drinking water.

* ForgotICouldChangeTheRules: Inverted/deconstructed. The Doctor really ''can't'' change the rules, at least without causing seven kinds of hell to break loose, but he temporarily forgets this.

* ForWantOfANail: Everything could have been avoided by filtering the water. In fact, they were filtering the water, but it turns out the spares they brought along were the wrong type, and one of the filters failed just before this all started.

** One played straight, one subverted in that the sacrifice wasn't to prevent something from happening, but to keep the time-line intact... or considering that Adelaide's death was changed from a straight sacrifice on Mars to suicide on Earth, is it? It could also be interpreted as heroically sacrificing herself to save the world from the horrors of the Time Lord Victorious.

-->'''The Doctor:''' There are laws, laws of time. And once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they ''died!''. All of them died! And do you know who that leaves? ''ME!'' It's taken all these years to realise it, but the laws of time are ''mine'' and they ''will OBEY me!''

* MakingASplash

* MultinationalTeam: The astronauts on the base. Several British and American, a German, a Russian, a Pakistani and an Australian and whatever Mia was; FreezeFrameBonus told us she was Korean-American (there's a South Korean flag sticker on one wall and her obituary said she was born in Houston and studied in Stanford), but GemmaChan doesn't put on an American accent (and possibly didn't know she needed to. The obituaries were likely made during post-production; it's possible that they made the decision to have Mia be from Texas long after filming).

* DwindlingParty

** Also during his brief reign of terror, he uses some of the Master's quotes. Guess who also shows up a few episodes later?

The Doctor leaves solemnly, listening through his helmet to the attempts of the remaining crew to fight fate the best they can. He hears about the water seeping into the main control room, taking out another member of the crew. Yet is infected as a single drop hits his face -- and this one demands the crew leave him before he's infected. The pilot of the shuttle, Ed, is also infected -- but [[HeroicSacrifice chooses to blow up the shuttle]] rather than let the Earth get infected. The resulting explosion traps our remaining three crew-members in a single storage room, and knocks the Doctor quite a good distance.

** The Doctor going Time Lord Victorious awesome, and ''scary''. Also, his solution to the problem is to use the TARDIS, something he almost ''never'' does.

[[caption-width-right:350:[-Would you like some water? [[WaterSourceTampering It's fresh.]]-] ]]

'''WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!'''

** The door that leads into the comm room where Adelaide contacts the Doctor closes with the [[DoomDoors same sound effect]] as the doors in the video game ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''.