The End Of The World

The new Doctor Who series so far demonstrates Hitchcock's adage that a good movie needs three things - a good script, a good script and a good script. Russell T Davies proves the point of course with his offering, but with the new Doctor Who you have the special effects, the costumes, the performances, the whole 'superior production values' too... and left feeling wanting more. This is entertaining stuff for anyone, it just so happens to be Dr Who.

Davies puts in gags that you would swear came from Douglas Adams - how the National Trust moves mountains, literally, to create a 'classic Earth' and he builds deep and meaningful relationships between characters with a single word. There is wonderful economy in his writing - the old series would have spent an entire episodes in what Davies can do simply by making the Doctor exhale!

On the downside, the Doctor's heroic rescue came straight out of the movie 'Galaxy Quest' - a hilarious Star Trek spoof movie. Davies ripping off a spoof of Star Trek? Well, genius steals and talent borrows and Davies almost gets away with it. Almost.

The Doctor sheds tears (for the first time?) on the subject of the fate of Gallifrey five billion years into the future - how this will pan out in the Doctor Who Universe remains to be seen, but it is about time we pushed things on here. Gallifrey (at least the bits run by the Time Lords) has always been to me a sort of 'Oxbridge in a Police State' planet. There's lots to be uncovered there.

With the Doctor's 11 regenerations now runnning out, how about 'The Guilty Secret of the Time Lords' that reveals the weakness that lead to their demise and the Doctor gaining an unlimited number of regenerations to keep the series going?

We see a human exploding - blood and bits everywhere - and we've got a 7pm timeslot for family viewing. At long last, someone, somewhere is going to complain about Doctor Who - as Dr Who writer Mark Gatiss expressed recently, we've got back that Dr Who 'Saturday feeling'!

On the evidence of this episode, the Americans just have to buy the series now. If BBC Wales and Russell T can keep this up we've got to be seeing plenty more where this came from. Christopher Eccleston would be advised to stay put!