The Girl in the Fireplace

Two things to say at the outset of my review. 1) This is the only episode of this new series that I have seen so I maybe unfair in basing my opinion on this one story. 2) David Tennant is streets ahead of Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor - in the right story he could be one of the greats.

First the good things about The Girl in the Fireplace. I greatly enjoyed David Tennant's performance up to a certain moment, which I'll write about later. Gone was the gurning of Christopher Eccleston, here was a Doctor who could save a child from the horrors lurking under her bed without making cheap jokes and grinning like a maniac.

I also found it refreshing that Rose had very little to do in this episode and that it mainly focused on the Doctor. There has been a lot of gushing about Miss Piper's role in the new series on these reviews and I don't think that it's any coincidence that these are entirely written by blokes. I'm not saying that her performance is bad, but her character can be tiresome. The rivalry over her in the last series between the Doctor, Jack and Mickey was pathetic and her possessive attitude to the Doctor is also starting to annoy.

I also loved the costumes and settings for this story.

The moment my disillusionment came was when the Doctor went sneaking around after Madame Pompadour like a lovesick schoolboy seemingly dazzled after just one kiss. I felt as if the Doctor was being transformed into some kind of cosmic Casanova or getting a touch of Captain Kirk Syndrome. The whole thing would have worked better if Madame's passion for the Doctor had been entirely one-sided and he'd had to resist her seductions!

I found the Doctor acting drunk very cringe-worthy as well - it was like seeing my Dad plastered - and where did he get shades from in 18th century France?

Was this episode also a not so subtle attempt to prepare the audience for Rose's departure? It seems that these days the Doctor would rather spend the evening dancing with his latest conquest than save Rose's life. He also didn't seem to show a great deal of concern at being stuck in 18th century France away from her. Had this episode been placed in the previous series the Doctor's whole concern would have been to get back to Rose.

The villains here were not particularly scary either, apart from their very first appearance. They didn't seem to be very robustly designed and it seemed that practically anything could destroy them. This made it all the more surprising that Madame Pompadour seemed to have made no preparations for their arrival in the five years after Rose's warning. All they would have had to do was dump buckets of water over them or something similar. Maybe they should have dumped a cold one over the Doctor and Madame at the same time!

Anyway this is just one story among others - maybe it's the Bad Wolf of this series (not a lot happened in that bar a lot of male posturing over Rose) The bit they showed of next week's episode looked very good. Less mush and more action!