Gridlock

Well that was terrific. By far and away the best episode of series three thus far for me, although as we're only three episodes in it admittedly doesn't have huge amounts of competition yet. But it's also one of my favourite episodes in the whole of the new series to date ? full of spirit and adventure and clever ideas, funny bits, dramatic bits and mysterious bits. Just, basically, a damn good slice of Doctor Who, one of those episodes that makes you thrilled to pieces that the show is back and putting out stuff as good as this.

Rather shockingly, I had been secretly hoping that the infamous football match beforehand would end up as a draw at ninety minutes and thus Gridlock would be put back a week, as that would mean the grand finale of this series would no longer clash with my father's sixtieth birthday party, which is going to present something of a problem in ten weeks' time. Watford's porous defence put paid to that idea, sadly, but no matter ? a minute or two into Gridlock and such thoughts were far away from my mind.

A return to the year five billion era makes sense, as it's a chance to revisit some of the mythology the new series has laid down for itself, rather than having to mine the classic series for it. Having said that, there was a slight concern in my mind given the problems with last year's New Earth, which had seemed disjointed and lacking. Fortunately, this episode was more in tune with the original five billion story, The End of the World, which is also one of my favourite episodes from the new series ? so ambitious and at the same time assured. Gridlock had that same sense of everyone being involved being at the top of their game.

In some sense, though, this was quite an atypical episode for modern Doctor Who, as despite all the impressive special effects work and CGI for the cityscapes and the Macra, much of it was contained within those tiny car sets. A bit retro, really, and harking back to what the classic series always managed to pull off so well ? making three people talking to each other on one small set seem so engaging. I am not entirely sure how gripping it may have been for the younger members of the audience, but they still had the thrill of the Doctor jumping from car to car, the talking cats and of course big giant crabs!

Speaking of which, wasn't the presence of the Macra a nice little nod for all the Troughton era fans watching? How marvellous to quite randomly revive one of the programme's more obscure and, let's face it, originally quite rubbish foes. They didn't really do a great deal, but it was nice for them to pop up and wave a claw about. I'm only sorry that I accidentally found out about their presence in the episode a couple of days before it aired, and thus wasn't as surprised as many others were by the revelation of them. Fortunately for most, though, they seem to have generally been one of the better-kept secrets of the new series.

The same alas can't be said for the Face of Boe's final words, which everyone and their brother has known or guessed for the past eighteen months or so. Davies made sure of this himself, admittedly, by having the cryptic message at the end of the Doctor's profile in the 2006 annual and then telling DWM that the message would be four words long, so he probably wanted the hard-core fans to guess it, knowing at the same time the general audience and the kids wouldn't know or wouldn't care. In the scheme of things it's not a major issue, as it's just a teaser, setting up as-yet-unguessed at events for the series finale. It's not so much what he said that's as important as what he meant, and we can't yet be sure of that.

Alas we can be sure that the big old Boe Face is dead and gone, and as one of the elements that are purely new series to have caught on and been a success, that's rather sad. Like a little piece of the new mythology brought to us in 2005 dying off. There are only Jack and the Daleks left now from the comeback, just two short years ago ? frightening sometimes just how quickly the pace of this series moves on!

Things have moved on for Novice Hame from New Earth too, and I liked the way her prosthetic make-up had been 'aged up' ? not the sort of detail you suspect they would have bothered with back in the day. I'm quite glad that she gained redemption for her crimes, although it's rather sad that the fate of the city means all of the Doctor's actions back in New Earth were essentially pointless, and the people he saved all died off anyway, or at least most of them.

Hame's not the only cat we encounter, although we'll gloss over that weird black thing who becomes a victim of the Macra along with her two young ladyfriends ? best not to go too far into that one, I think! What I will go into is how good the prosthetics were on all the cat creations, although that's to be expected after the success of their appearance in New Earth, one of the few elements from that episode that could be said to have been an unqualified success.

I think Ardal O'Hanlon as Brannigan was probably the best guest star of the third series so far, an excellent character and it's a shame Davies has indicated we won't be going back to New Earth again as I thought he was well worth a return appearance. He didn't get to do all that much, admittedly, but then again nobody in the traffic jam really did; that was the whole point of them, sad little character sketches trapped in their hopeless, go-nowhere lives forever.

Sadly, Martha didn't really get to do all that much this episode either, although she did get to show flashes of her intelligence once more when she suggested the 'turn everything off' submarine-type trick to evade the Macra. A shame that without the Doctor they would all have thus suffocated, but hey ? the woman can't be expected to think of everything! Nice to see though how much faith she already has in the Doctor in only their third adventure together.

The Doctor was terrific throughout ? especially when David Tennant was given some of the more contemplative stuff he's really not given enough of sometimes. As I have said in many of my Doctor Who episode reviews, I love it when we are given little snippets of information that enhance the mystery of the character and his background and history, so I of course loved the descriptions of Gallifrey he gave to Martha, especially so given that some of them were directly taken from Susan's description of the planet to Ian and Barbara back in The Sensorites.

Admittedly, the final scene of the story was very similar to that of The End of the World, but I thought they just about got away with it, partly because Rose and Martha's approaches to the Doctor were so different. This was underlined when Martha was asking if she was the one the Face of Boe was referring to, and he was firmly and a little rudely of the opinion that she was not! So, despite all its echoing of that End of the World scene, I liked that ending as the Doctor sadly reminisced about his home.

Plus of course it worked well for introducing Martha to the concept of the evil Daleks, something that might stand her in good stead in the not-too-distant future.