I give up

Doctor who has a lot of “space mission goes wrong” type episodes, but most of them have some degree of detachment from current humanity due to them taking place way further in the future or far out in space, making the technology and problems in the episode less familiar.

Waters of mars takes place on mars (duhh) which is a planet people talk about one day being able to visit *right now* (also Brooke would be 27 this year, I think, so she grew up in a world that looks like this, in comparison to some far future humans we see having trouble in space. And ik the companions are from the present but it feels different with the secondary characters because they’re not traveling with the doctor) a lot of the tech stuff at the mars base still resembles current level technology and the whole chain of events is caused by an incredibly simple problem that could theoretically happen right now: a broken water filter causing the supply to be contaminated

twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street

a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode

judged by solely by christopher eccleston

⏳ donna !!