Love & Monsters

This must be the worst "Doctor Who" episode of all time (makes the Horns of Nimon look outstanding). Where was the Doctor? Where was the plot? The Abzorbaloff was a fantastic creation, could be one of my favourite monsters, apart from the dodgy northern accent (well done to the Blue Peter competition winner), but the rest was simply dreadful. Real "car crash television" - I couldn't stop watching this out of disbelief that it could get any worse, but it did.

The episode was reduced to cheap slapstick from the start, with the Doctor and Rose chasing around after a pantomime alien like something out of Scooby Doo. After the first Eccleston story (Rose), I always thought it was a shame that the writers didn't do more with the conspiracy theorist idea (Clive the anorak tracking the doctor's different appearances in history via the internet, etc), and it was nice to see the idea resurrected through the LINDA group. Shame this was wasted on such a rubbish "story", and some moments like the band performing ELO covers just made me cringe. Most of this episode was irrelevant to Doctor Who.

The only light relief for this viewer was Jackie Tyler's attempted seduction of Elton, though probably I should keep my own personal fantasies about older women out of this J. Even the moral background of the Doctor was undermined - given his love of humanity, he would never reduce a human being to a life as a face grafted onto a paving slab. Another ridiculous ploy just to get in a cheap knob gag. Davies should be sacked for this!

Overall, this was embarrassing filler - surely it would have been better to extend one of the other stories into a two-parter (The Girl in the Fireplace?), taking more time to build the story, as in the classic series. The quick editing and high tempo of many of the episodes in this series has left me cold, and I would much rather have some suspense and proper character development than this kind of cartoon comedy. Truly awful.