Fear Her

After the mixed 'Love and Monsters' comes an episode which is far more successful at giving us a good one-off story on a reduced budget.

'Fear Her' cracked on at a good pace, with the Doctor and Rose posing at detectives on a street where children are vanishing mysteriously and a local girl spends all her time penned up in her bedroom, surrounded by drawings of the missing.

Matthew Graham, writer and co-creator of 'Life on Mars', includes some nice allusions to his own series, with David Tennant and Billie Piper playing up the copper stereotype wherever possible. Graham also manages to slip several genuinely funny gags into the proceedings - the best probably being the Doctor having to repark the TARDIS when he can't open the door.

Despite the season-long issue of the episode being just a bit too well-lit (wasn't everything a little darker and moodier last year?), 'Fear Her' manages to create a genuinely unsettling sense of something nasty under the surface in everyday suburbia, with nods to 'Poltergeist' and 'The Exorcist' in the manner in which Chloe is possessed. The explanation for what is going on is quite nice, too. This is not a malevolent being looking to conquer or kill, it is a child who has lost its family and is acting out in anger against its loneliness. The London Olympics setting is used to good effect, also.

In the end, Rose manages to save the day without the Doctor, putting her nicely back in focus for the upcoming finale. If I have one criticism, it's that the foreshadowing dialogue which closes 'Fear Her' feels just a little shoehorned in, not to mention cliched ('There's a storm coming ...'). Still, the sight of the Doctor and Rose sharing a precious moment in the midst of celebrations is a nice way to set up the darkness to come.

And then we come to THAT trailer.

Clearly a lot of work has gone into the finale of season 2. This was not a standard 'next week' preview, but a proper build-up to something big. Even the music was ominous. So many questions ... was that a Dalek ray we saw a brief snippet of? It certainly seemed to share the same SFX and sound effect. Is Earth mergeing with the parallel world of 'Rise of the Cybermen'? Does this mean Mickey will make an appearance? And will Rose actually die?

I've genuinely no idea, for all The Sun's attempt at spoilage. It could be that Jackie and Mickey will be the ones to die, prompting Rose to abandon the Doctor in a Tegan-style, 'It's just not fun any more' moment.

Of course, the biggest surprise would be if it was Tennant who took the final fall, but I can't see that happening. Besides, I really want the Tenth Doctor to be given some darker material to work with next year, so I hope he's sticking around.

Either way, we've come to the last adventure of a pretty strong season. There have been some issues along the way and I don't feel the end has been built up quite as successfully as it was in season one, but I get the feeling we're in for something really special. Russell T Davies has promised payoffs not only for this year's setup, but for eveything which has happened since the show came back.

Count me excited.