Army of Ghosts

A local shop here in Cardiff had a sign outside for a few weeks advertising 'OOD and DRINK'. Made me smile every time I walked past; imagining a very polite alien serving behind the counter. (They've fixed it now, unfortunately. Just thought I'd share that with anyone who might read this!)

In a very forced attempt to make this vaguely relevant, this season of 'Doctor Who' has made me smile, often. Laugh out loud sometimes.Even cheer occasionally.

Well, 'Army of Ghosts' hasn't bucked that trend.

Roses' opening voiceover was an intriguing 'teaser'...is this a voice from 'beyond the grave'? Is "died" metaphorical rather than literal? My own theory (no doubt wrong, but ya never know; I was right about Bad Wolf) is that traumatic events that occur in 'Doomsday' (I know, the clue's in the title.) result in the Doctor and Rose, ahem, parting ways...but she doesn't die. Someone close to her does, and she just can't go on...I'm glad I don't know.

Speculating further, knock-on effects could include a darkening of the tenth Doctors persona (I really like this Doctor, and we've seen glimpses of darkness, so this could well work in Tennant's favour...assuming he IS staying of course!) and less contemporary Earth stories. (Fair do's, we've had 8 out of 21 stories of this nature so far...hardly overkill.I mean, we had 39 episodes in a row at the start of the 70's with no travels in space *or* time!)

And...the end of the so-called Tyler 'soap'...an extended family of regular characters for the audience to identify with. It has largely worked for me personally, to be honest. A lot more identifiable to me than the 'UNIT' family. (Don't get me wrong; it's not a favourite, but I'm fond of the Pertwee era.) Hmm, maybe I'm still a bit prickly remembering my favourite era being dismissed as 'the Davison soap'...ah well, s'all a matter of opinion.

Back to the point! A brief list of things that made me laugh/smile this week. (stealing some recent reviewers approach!)

a) The Doctor getting yet more 'lip action', but not being very pleased about it.

b) The fun 'TV clips' ; especially Dame Barbara in (ahhhh!) The Queen Vic, yelling "Gerratamypub!!" Brilliant.

c) "Ghostbusters!!!"

d) "If we end up on Mars...I'm gonna kill you."

I know a number of people cannot stand Jackie; personally I've always liked the character, and think she's just getting better!

Of course, things start to get a bit darker. I enjoyed Tracy-Ann Oberman's performance very much. Her character is charming, worryingly patriotic and a bit 'happy clappy new management' -type person...be interested to see how she developes as she ends this episode clearly out of her depth...

And...it's 'Action Mickey'!!! Good to see the lad back, even though, rather annoyingly, I already knew via 'The Observer'...b*gger.

By the way, that 'extermination' shot in the preview for this episode I could've done without.

David Tennant mentioning The Eternals from a favourite Davison story got a cheer.

I'll pontificate more after I've seen how this story pans out. Come on, Saturday.

(Aside: The reviews of 'Love & Monsters' were fascinatingly diverse. Kudos to the review which made a great point about Roses' selfishness re: Jackie and added, with impeccable timing, "strident cow." That made me laugh out loud. And hey, I'm no conservative in any way or form, didn't like the,er, oral allusion cos it was rather cr*p and creepy in the context of the episode, and respect everyone's opinions.....however misguided they are!)

That's a joke, by the way. Hope we all enjoy a memorable concusion....soon see.