Fast-paced, intriguing and with a suitably epic feel... But enough about the trailer for next week's Army of Ghosts, what was Fear Her like? Yes, you've got to feel sorry for writer Matthew Graham, lumbered with the dodgy episode 11 slot, forever to be known as 'the cheap filler episode before the big season-closing two-parter'. Last year it gave us Boom Town, which, I confess, was better than expected. But then I wasn't exactly expecting a lot...

But enough already - what about the episode in hand? Well... um... it was, er... all right, I guess. I don't recall hiding my eyes in embarrassment (well, perhaps just the once) or having to negotiate any unbelievably bad plot holes. But at the same time I didn't particularly find myself being drawn into (sorry) an exciting story. Possibly because there wasn't one.

After doing 'different' last week, Doctor Who tackled 'small'. An insignificant corner of a bland housing estate and only two real characters, apart from the Doctor and Rose. Nothing wrong in that. But you do need something - a bit of danger, a bit of intrigue, something to stop the viewer's mind from wandering. And the story of a small floaty alien thing possessing a lonely 12-year old girl in an attempt to meet some new friends wasn't it.

Both Abisola Agbaje as Chloe and Nina Sosanya as her mother Trish turned in good performances, unlike the actors playing the light-relief council worker and the 'pensioner who senses something's wrong', both of whom seemed to be reading their lines off cue cards, possibly for the first time. And Huw Edwards really ought to stick to (proper) newsreading.

The Doctor casually drops his 'I was a Dad once' line into conversation, which was obviously a bit of a bombshell for Rose, but not for folk that remember he used to have his granddaughter along as a travelling companion, once upon a time. Reasonably sinister use of a shadow and a red light and a voice growling 'I'm coming to hurt you' (hurrah for old school effects!) gave the story a bit of a lift, but it was a case of too little too late, really. Then there's the cringeworthy climax, with the Doctor trotting along with the Olympic Torch while Huw Edwards blurts on about love. Aw, shucks. Then the Doctor chillingly mumbles something about storms coming for no real reason, apart from to drum up some excitement for the next episode.

I'll remember New Earth for its awfulness. I'll remember The Girl in the Fireplace for its greatness. But Fear Her, which was neither, I'm liable to forget entirely. Oh well.

So, just the Army of Ghosts/Doomsday two-parter to go. Can it give the season a much-needed lift? Let's hope so. A couple of thoughts crossed my mind after watching the preview. Firstly, with Rose saying that this is the last story she'll tell (or words to that effect), maybe she won't get zapped - after all, how's she supposed to tell the story if she's dead? And secondly, that looked and sounded suspiciously like a dalek gun at one point. Is Russell T Davies going to succumb to that classic teenage fanboy fantasy and pitch the daleks against the cybermen? God, let's hope not.

"Fingers on lips!!"

A touch of 'Sapphire & Steel', a sprinkling of 'The Twilight Zone', a hint of 'Beasts'. Add my favourite David Tennant performance to date, great direction, a sparkling and quotable script, Andy Pryor,as per, doing an excellent job on the casting front...and stir.

Result? (Besides dodgy cooking allusions, that is?!) A delightful 45 minutes of television that I thoroughly enjoyed. Matthew Graham just seems to 'get' current 'Doctor Who'. Apart from the abusive (dead) father, there are no villains in this story; just a lonely alien being empathising with a lonely human child. The Doctor understands and, with a lot of help from his friend (Billie in great form...again) the day is saved again. (and he gets a cake decorated with ballbearings!!!)

Speaking of the Doctor...well, I've hardly been backward in coming forward with my praise for David Tennant, and here he gave a lovely performance, aided by great lines, sympathetic support and the ever impressive Euros Lyn. "I'm being facetious...there's no call for it." "I've got a colleague...Lewis!" "I'm not really a cat person..." "Thanks! I'm experimenting with back-combing...oh." "I'm help." And, most ominously, "Never say 'never ever'" ....all delivered with aplomb. Moments that had me cheering included the Doctor picking up and running with the olympic torch ("Feel the love"...Ahh, I'm just a hippy at heart, I think) and the and the *gorgeous" fingers on lips scene...bit of a "Go to your room" moment. If he carries on in this form, David Tennant might well become my favourite timelord, period.

Nina Sosanya and Abisola Agbaje performed well as the damaged mother and daughter, and Abdul Sallis gave a completely winning performance as Kel the council worker. He takes pride in his work! (the "council axe...council road" bit had me chuckling.)

Some 'previewers' refered to this as a low-key, "hemmed in" episode. Maybe. Maybe that's why I liked it so much. The (almost) present day settings need to be varied with more alien worlds, and I hope that will happen, but stories with this much zest and warmth I can live with! (and Season 7 is easily my favourite Pertwee season.) Childrens drawings. 'Evil' in a wardrobe. Paranoia on a normal street...it works. Aside; anyone pick up on a 'Survival' part one vibe? Especially when that darn cat appears...

No 'Next Time...' caption this week; just sombre music and a Billie voiceover. Some things about 'Army of Ghosts' have been revealed to me (Cheers, The bl**dy Observer!) but thankfully much is unknown. Can't wait...

Anal point-scoring mode...'Fear Her' gets a 9/10. I'm off to read the reviews of 'Love & Monsters' now...a quick glimpse has suggested my thinking it'd get a mixed reaction is something of an understatement!

That's why I really like this site...such diverse opinions. And no-one slags off other reviewers who might disagree with them...he says, cautiously leading up to the fact that 'Love & Monsters' has grown on him and gets 8/10, despite certain reservations.

Cybermen, Torchwood, Rose Tyler's "last tale" (no spoilers here).....Here we go.

So another Saturday night and another sub-standard filler episode of Doctor Who. Fear her? Not really. Fear RTD? Definitely! You know, a lot has been said about this TV series over the decades with its men in rubber suits, silly stories and supposed 'wobbly sets', but one thing it would be difficult to accuse this show of is a lack of respect for its audience ... until now. It's alarming to see how - from the 'Christmas Invasion' through to 'Fear her' last Saturday - Doctor Who has become horribly formulaic, dull, smug and silly. Indeed, we may look back at this entire current series in the not-too-distant future and view it as nothing more than a warm-up act for Torchwood. The stories have been high on originality, but low on substance with an increasingly hackneyed and embarrassing 'monster of the week' structure to each episode. It doesn't seem to matter who or what the monster is, why it exists, where it comes from, or what motivates it (i.e. the 'pilot fish' of the Christmas Invasion, the cat nuns, the monks and werewolf in Tooth and Claw, 'The Wire', the demon/devil in the Satan's pit, the Absorbalov and so forth. All that matters is that it's a monster and it needs to be stopped. Oops, sorry, first it needs to threaten Rose so that the Doctor can get angry and righteous and then stop it (usually with a combination of sonic screwdriver and psychic paper). Then we can end the show with some long monologues explaining what just happened and the moral lesson learned. Of course, leaving some monsters mysterious is great (as with 'The Satan Pit), but there has been a long tradition in Doctor Who of starting with a 'monster', but by the end of the story we (i.e. the audience, the Doctor and his companions) come to understand this monster as something more complex - and often something much more challenging and/or terrifying. More than this, efforts have always been made to explain, or at least make some kind of sense of monsters and events within the narrative of the story told. Indeed, it's the Doctor's ability to reason through a mystery that has been the attraction of the series for young and old since the show first began.

What seems to have happened this series is a move from having an essential 'realism' to the Who universe, to an attitude that treats the whole world in which the story is set as an ironic in-joke that RTD can share with his audience. Even the Doctor and Rose seem to exit the TARDIS each week with a smug self-knowing grin waiting for the next 'monster' (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) to appear. This kind of irony can be used to great effect, and has been used on successful shows like Buffy, The X-Files, the various Star Treks, Lost, etc. But it only works as the exception to an established and respected rule. For RTD, his ironic take on Doctor Who IS the rule and as such it makes for stories which appear silly and childish to newcomers and embarrassing and alienating to existing fans. Worse still this ironic bit of fun then jars terribly with the sudden gear shift that inevitably happens midway through each episode when the monster becomes an actual (albeit short-lived) threat - again, usually to Rose - leaving the audience to reconcile these strained and conflicting elements in a very limited and often rushed time frame. The trouble is that there isn't an adequate pay-off for audiences wanting to go through this and as a result we have seen a steady drop in audience figures and general lack of interest in the show from the media. As it did in the late eighties, the show is fast becoming thought of as 'a bit of nonsense', or a kid's show. This is made all the worse by RTD admitting as much each time he is interviewed on Doctor Who Confidential and through his scripts which create and then hinge on his worrying mix of ironic childish silliness and adult innuendo. Of course what the makers of this series are forgetting is that great children's books, films, television, you name it, weren't 'good' because they were written for children. They were just good. Also they were not as a rule ironic, simply good stories that took themselves just seriously enough for the reader/audience to do the same. Arguing that we shouldn't take some of these stories too seriously because they were written for a young audience is a tired old excuse for rubbish and badly made TV. I don't know about you lot, but this excuse as used by both the programme makers and fans alike is something the children on my planet would find insulting ... now where did I last hear that?

Last Saturday's episode 'Fear her', like 'Love and Monsters' and the 'Idiots Lantern' before it, is an all too familiar form of this 'ironic' and ultimately corrosive attitude to good science fiction and fantasy storytelling. What is far worse in this episode, however, is that for a second week fans are short-changed in another blatant attempt to save money by having a 'monster in suburbia' story in which the Doctor and Rose become hermetically sealed in a tiny and dull earthbound world in which people merrily trust them enough to tell them everything they need to know and let them roam around their houses and streets as children vanish. A world were suitably ethnically diverse homeowners wander around their dead end street like characters in a computer game, and were 'cockerney' council workers not only take great pride in tarmacing a small section of road, but are also a great means of moving the story along with their senseless exposition. This kind of sterile fantasy of Britain is fine on other BBC shows like Eastenders, Holby City, Doctors (pardon the pun) etc., but its insulting and just plain weird on a show like Doctor Who. Add to this the (god it hurts just to think of it again) torch of love crap with the Doctor running up to light the Olympic flame!

Come on people! Please God, look at what I've just written - the Doctor carried the Olympic torch to the sound of a faux BBC commentary talking about love and unity!! As fans we've got to stop being apologists for RTD and start opening our eyes to what is going on. Our favourite TV show is being hijacked by a glossy, morally hygienic, and ultimately hollow British Broadcasting Corporation vision of England and Doctor Who. It's an insidious form of propaganda and we're the ones cheering it along for fear that if we don't then our favourite show will get cancelled! Yet with every uncritical and apologetic review we as fans are giving RTD and co. an even more powerful warrant to make this kind of nonsense and then to abandon the show (and its spin offs) when the BBC and all concerned have made enough money. If we are happy to sit and accept this kind of ironic simplistic rubbish as a good example of British television (let alone science fiction) then we deserve the show to be cancelled after Series 3 - which is undoubtedly what the BBC will do if viewing figures continue to drop (World Cup or no World Cup). One final thought, this series (like the previous one) is obsessed with 'those that get left behind'. Is it just me, or have we spent so much time in the company of these people that it is now us, the Doctor and Rose that are getting left behind? Left behind whilst the rest of the potential Who universe of time and space is left unexplored, as well as increasingly left behind more exciting and challenging imported TV shows.

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.

Last year we had “Boom Town.” This year’s filler episode is Matthew Graham’s “Fear Her,” an episode written quite literally to fill the gap left by Stephen Fry’s unfinished episode. I don’t think I’m being unduly harsh by saying that this is the worst episode of the season yet, especially bearing in mind the competition. In fairness, for a really cheap little episode, there is a hell of a lot to love about this episode. For me, it’s greatest strength is its humour. Last week I thought “Love & Monsters” was funny, but at times “Fear Her” had me rolling in the aisles. Scenes like the Doctor coming face to face with the burly Dad, all the “Fingers on lips!” stuff and the immortal line from Kel – “You just took a council axe from a council van and now you’re digging up a council road! I’m reporting you to the council!” – really dragged the episode up from being a (relatively) average episode to a quite decent one.

“Five, six, seven, eight. There’s a Doctor at the gate.”

Ironically, one of this episode’s greatest strengths is the cheapness of it all. What could be creepier than kids going missing on a normal, suburban street in the not-too-distant future? Moreover, although it’s been done before the ‘spooky little girl’ angle really works. What makes Chloe so frightening here is her intensity rather than her power. Abisola Agbaje brings so much to the part for someone so young, and that voice is just disturbing! Her strange power itself is fascinating, only in Doctor Who could you have one of your main characters being attacked by a scribble! The special effects in this episode may be few and far between, but when they are used they look superb – the cartoon boy coming to life in the pre-title sequence is quite horrific; he looked like something off the artwork of a Radiohead album!

Although it is the Doctor who works everything out about the Isouls creature that has taken over young Chloe, when he becomes one of her drawings it is up to Rose to save the day single-handedly. It’s strange to think that this is Rose’s last chance to really do something on her own – in a fortnight’s time she’ll be gone (one way or another!) and so “Fear Her” is really her last chance to show what she can do. Billie doesn’t disappoint – she kicks ass! Digging up council roads with council axes… Smashing through doors with axes… Rose rocks! Even when the Doctor is still around, in Chloe’s bedroom it is Rose who does most of the explaining, not the Doctor, and it is Rose who really stands up to Chloe’s Mum Trish (Nina Sosanya of Teachers fame) and blames her for making Chloe feel so isolated. It’s also only fair to mention that Billie looks absolutely stunning in this episode – we’re talking nearly “New Earth” standard!

The story’s conclusion is very uplifting and reminded me very much of the “Everybody lives!” finale to “The Doctor Dances.” Even the music is the same. This Isouls creature has taken Chloe over because she feels lonely, and the Isouls see that as suffering beyond imagination. The Isouls feed off each other’s love you see – not your typical Doctor Who baddie, I’ll admit. The Isouls’ pod needs some love and so Rose throws it into the Olympic Torch that the Doctor carries all the way into the Olympic Stadium! It’s a wonderful Doctor Who moment, a definite calm before the storm.

“Never say never ever.”

“We’ll always be okay you and me, don’t you reckon Doctor?”

“Something’s in the air. Something coming. A storm’s approaching.”

And so next week it’s the big one. We all know she’s leaving, and the question everybody is asking is “is Rose gonna die?” Personally, I hope not, but I really can’t see any other way of getting her to leave the Doctor. She’d rather die. Moreover, if they kill Rose millions of kids are gonna be scarred for life! No one even liked Adric and look what his death did to people!

On one final note, I’ve noticed that the writers have been much braver this year about slipping in more and more references to the show’s past, and “Fear Her” marks the biggest one yet. Blink and you’ll miss it, but in the TARDIS Rose says to the Doctor, “…easy for you to say, you don’t have kids,” to which he replies “I was a dad once.” It won’t matter to a lot of people, but I for one am glad that the new series is a definite continuation of the show that began back in 1963 with the Doctor and his granddaughter Susan. Whether she actually is his granddaughter or not is another matter, it depends where you stand on the whole ‘Other’ issue… but regardless, it’s the latest in the long line of nice little touches that certainly sit well with this fan.

“Fear Her” was a super episode of Doctor Who, well written and directed, and decently acted; though some have found it forgettable, my own opinion is that it achieves excellence more than once.

I enjoyed this episode practically the whole way through, from the comedy of the Doctor’s awkward materialisation at the start to the splendidly uplifting finale as the Doctor lights the Olympic flame – though Huw Edwards’ voiceover is perhaps weak, and the whole thing is admittedly contrived (but not more contrived than “The Girl in the Fireplace”, and who complained about that?!). Though having a sports reporter, upon witnessing the disappearance of an Olympic crowd, babbling not once but twice about the flame representing love, courage and all that, is a bit odd, at least those fine virtues took centre stage, and the Doctor – literally – became their torchbearer. Even apart from the justification in plot terms of that finale (the alien ship needed the power boost and a helping hand from him), that symbolism made the indulgence more than okay for this viewer.

Yes, I was extremely impressed by that; and despite being sidelined in exactly the same way that Rose was deleted from the plot of “The Idiot’s Lantern”, the Doctor still managed to hold the episode together, with a fantastic performance from DT – and, while we’re on the subject, David Tennant earnestly telling a frightened woman “I’m help” is far preferable to David Tennant screaming “No power on this earth can stop me now!”, or somesuch rubbish. In my humble opinion, only one of those lines could really be spoken by the Doctor!

And while the Dr Who fan in me was thrilled by the Doctor’s offhanded comment about being a father (well of course he is – and yet in forty years, he has never actually come out and said so!), and the Sci-Fi enthusiast by the good conception and realisation of the alien around whom it all revolves, the television viewer was hugely impressed by the episode’s construction. The Doctor and Rose appear in a utterly normal street, discover some fairly normal people, and spend most of their time inside a very normal house – this was an episode of a major TV drama which could, with a bit of ingenuity, have been done fairly easily on stage** – more so even than “Dalek” or “Father’s Day”. “Fear Her” benefited hugely from the low-key settings, scenarios and effects.

The resolution of the plot was another brilliant high – with the Doctor gone, Rose must prove once again just how far she has come under his tutelage. Billie (aided by perfectly-judged direction) gives a stellar performance as she conveys Rose’s struggles to bring everything to a happy end; and just as she manages it, she has to contend with the monstrous drawing of Chloe’s father, coming to life in the cupboard upstairs! But Chloe and her mother manage to sort that one out fairly well themselves, showing, in turn, how far they have come – thanks to the Doctor. Good old Doctor!

Following Alan W. E. Dann’s rant about “po-faced, sexless, conservative” Who fans in the “Love and Monsters” reviews last week (and I am proud to be a conservative, in all walks of life as well as Who fandom), I would say this – “Fear Her” is a shining example of the kind of programme Dr Who can still be, even in 2006. It gives lie to the simplistic “radical versus conservative” argument – as Steven Moffat said on the “City of Death” DVD, previously Dr Who stories have been about maintaining a status quo (for those not in the know, City of Death ends with a fake Mona Lisa, underwritten with the words “this is a fake” in felt-tip, hanging in the Louvre), and “Fear Her”, with its mass-disappearances, doesn’t bother with anything like that; none of the new series episodes have. And yet! “Conservative” to its core – in that it retains Dr Who’s historic values and techniques, and starts with the TARDIS materialising and features the Doctor in most scenes (more or less) – “Fear Her” lives up to the promise of the new series, which things like “Love and Monsters” (despite all that episode’s initial promise) just don’t. It doesn’t have farting aliens, stupid jokes taking the mickey of the Royals, or barely-veiled references to oral sex, because it is stronger without those things. And, to be blunt, it is far, far better than most of the episodes we have seen hitherto.

**Actually no, maybe the drawings on A4 paper ‘coming to life’ would present a bit of a problem. But I’ve never made a production for the stage, so I don’t know!