New Earth

Series two is back, but after three long months of waiting for more Tenth Doctor was it worth the wait? Quite frankly I felt not.

This was a disappointing story where everything but the storyline felt right. The acting was superb, especially the leads, the visuals were of the highest quality and I have no complaints about the sound. The locations had atmosphere and you could smell the hospital reception.

Everything that went wrong with this episode fell down exactly in the same places of RTDs efforts of season one. Notably the over the top writer self-indulgence with completely irrelevant, almost fetish, investigation of some characters and the taking of unwanted side tracks with plot threads. The latter were agonising as it took time away from what could have been a far deeper and more interesting plot. The death ridden flesh stock was a fantastic idea and could have been worked well, instead they instantly turned from lifeless corpses (a psuedo realistic hard line cure) to Joe Bloggs with a slight cold seemingly just to make a happy ending. The theory of them containing every disease was interesting, yet the Doctor took twentyish cures and instantly they are fine. As for the body-swapping, we've been there and done that; the "lets swap every couple of seconds" also made it painful to watch. Cassandra was bearable in series one and should have been left there. Her desire to live was the key to the character until the plot line said otherwise.

My idea on seeing the script would have Swap Cassandra for other more interesting points, for example the cat people, who were they and why did they care so much for selected humans?

The positive's were there. David Tennant's Doctor was excellent. The portrayal of the Doctor was moody yet controlled and consistent, something even Christopher Ecclestone took a while to do. Rose took a more mature approach, and I thought Billie handled the body swap well. The latter saved the episode from complete farce.

After such a long wait I was disappointed and even felt my self reaching for the remote after half an hour. I felt myself asking if RTD and the BBC team would accept such scripts from the third party writers. I think not!

RTD has proved in the climax of season one he can write, and the historic guest writing has been superb. Hopefully, and I also believe this will be the case, things will get better and this meaningless plot was a blip. Roll on the rest of season two, I've waited long enough...