Father's Day

It was all going so well. Unfortunately, Father's Day was the moment "New Series 1" had a rather nasty prang and ended up sprawled over the bonnet of a speeding gold Chevette.

Let's start with the good stuff. The human elements of Father's Day - and the overall premise - were brilliant. Who hasn't thought "if only" or wanted to change something in their lives, see how the world and their family was before they were born? Shaun Dingwall gave a stunning performance as Rose's dad (all the more so given the material he had to work with - more on this later) and Billie Piper was again excellent; human without being mawkish, understated without being cold, warm without being too cosy. This new, more personal side to Dr Who... y'know it could just work.

Standards of direction were high - notably the long shot of Rose's face against the backdrop of the church window - as was production, with big hair and shiny suits all present and 1987 correct. Nice little touches like the Graham Bell phone call and the car radio playing 21st century techno showed good attention to detail. And the Reapers looked fantastic with the moments before they appeared, and their ultimate revelation, genuinely spooky/scary.

However, it's somehow ironic that a Dr Who episode set in the late 1980s should fall down so badly on plot.

Simply, Father's Day made absolutely no sense at all, whatsoever. Even the Doctor couldn't muster anything approaching a sensible diagnosis for why a "wound in time" needed to be "sterilised" by crossbred vulture-dactyl things, scary as they were. Things went from bad to worse when, somehow, a 80s brickphone battery was rigged up to "recharge" the invisible Tardis, which would somehow get the damn things back in their cage, let Stuart and Sarah get married, keep Rose's dad alive and er, wipe everyone's memory. I'm struggling here.

Once again the Doctor passed the buck - here Rose, last week Adam - for events for which he bears a great deal of responsibility. More attempts to underline the doctor's 'alien-ness' perhaps, but yet again, he comes across more arrogant, selfish - and human.

Clueless too. Surely a TIME LORD would be the expert at sorting out disturbances in, er, time? This Doctor is more bodger than schemer. The sum of his character's role in this episode: has a tiff with Rose after showing off to impress her (again), runs around shouting, acts a bit miffy, sulks, apologises, then gets himself Reaper-ed. Eventually it took Tyler senior to obligingly throw himself under the damn car (why had it followed him to the church?), perhaps in hope of terminating the nonsensical turn the life-he-shouldn't-have-had was taking.

Someone in post-production should have intervened to at least ask for some attention to be paid to these problems. Here was a fine premise - meddling in time with unforeseen consequences - but one which to make convincing required depth of imagination and commitment to detail. Sadly, Father's Day had neither. In the end, this story reeked of compromise. Perhaps Russell T upped the human elements to gloss over the holes, perhaps the writers didn't credit the early-evening audience with the intelligence to follow a complicated idea. Perhaps it's enough for children to have an attack of flappy scary scaly things and some big weepy moments. For me however, this episode was a big let down. Maybe Richard Wilson can make amends next week.