Retrospective Discussion | Doctor Who (2005) | 3x06 "The Lazarus Experiment"
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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2026
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Yeah, this pretty much exists on the strength of the leads' chemistry. As stories go it's entire inconsequential, and could be summed up as "the Doctor meets Martha's family; weird stuff happens around them".
That CGI scorpion is pretty atrocious. Also, I forget if it's ever explained how Lazarus has dormant scorpion genes that he could be (d)evolved into/out of/from. The whole thing is fairly nonsensical, even for a Doctor Who episode.
If one were to compare RTD's first and second eras, this story could be juxtaposed to "Lucky day" as a fairly humdrum monster used as backdrop for character buildup to seed a finale. Only that's sort of generous to "Lazarus experiment" while selling "Lucky Day" short.
Either way, this isn't an episode I rewatch unless it's for a full Martha-thon...
There's a handwave about the dormant genes representing an evolutionary path not taken, which...yeah, it's nonsense, but maybe I'm just grading it on a Star Trek curve, because I actually don't mind it!
I mean, in Star Trek TNG s07, Barclay "devolved" into a spider or something, too, so I guess there's precedence?
Edit: "Genesis", blanked on the name of the episode...
Yeah, "Genesis" is exactly what I had in mind. I think this episode's "road not taken" idea to be marginally less silly than TNG's "the DNA has recombined to an earlier lifeform" one, so that extremely low bar has been cleared!