Like so...'

Essentially, this is 'Doctor Who' reboot 2.0. Russell T Davies takes all his experience from the first two series and distills them into a second pilot episode. But it's a pilot episode informed by the rules of engagement established since 'Rose'.

And what fun it is. Confident and witty, the introduction of Martha Jones feels more assured than that of Rose Tyler. Granted, back in 2005 an awful lot was being gambled on with the new series but here, two years in, we've been given something that takes the familiar tropes and gives them a jazz treatment, free associating playfully with our expectations and associations. Cue the Doctor in pyjamas and dressing gown again and Martha's cousin as well as a recap of various alien incursions on Earth in the last two years.

The general theme here is one of crime and punishment. The Judoon, beautifully designed space police rhino thugs by way of 'Hitch Hiker', are tracking down a Plasmavore, hiding in plain sight as a dotty old lady played by the marvellously arch Anne Reid. The kids won't sleep knowing their granny could be a blood sucking creature from outer space. Back to our theme then, prisons...prisons....prisons. Martha trapped in the escalating domestic disputes of her own family, caught in the mundane reality of death and taxes and the Doctor doomed to wander the universe alone whilst the Judoon catalogue anyone and anything in a merciless tyranny of numbers. A bizarre satire on the management hell of NHS trusts then? Even in space, you're a statistic. The hilarious squeeky marker pen crosses betray a deeper symbolism - you will conform or die. The cross represents the individual idealised, the crucifix an enforcement of conformity. Just don't go breaking vases over the heads of rhino space police any day soon. It upsets their cataloguing and the due process of the law.

And the Plasmavore has murdered a child. Yes, from the description it sounds like Shirley Temple meets Bonnie Langford but to kill another being because they had a fresh complexion and a curly barnet is a sign that you've been swallowed by the 'darkness' to come. The criminal is oh so familar with the underworld, has a deep relationship with the darker side of life, knows how to duck and dive. Strangely, the Plasmavore and the Doctor are functioning opposites - both pretend to be patients in the hospital to gain their own advantage. The Plasmavore is a hacker, swiping identities to hide in plain sight, the Doctor is a freakish Time Lord gigolo luring Martha into his TARDIS. Granted, he sacrifices his own identity to flush out the interloper.

So what of Martha? Personally, I think Freema hits the ground running. She's quite splendid in this opening episode and establishes the character not just in a broad sense but in the smaller details. Her humanism is right to the fore when she pauses to close the eyes of the now deceased consultant, Mr. Stoker (yes, a little nod to Bram there). She respects the dead and the dying and understands completely that the Doctor has sacrificed himself to save the day. She doesn't muck about and takes quite a lot in her stride. Her sentimental side will, I think, be the force that drives the forthcoming series as she tries to keep her feelings about our favourite Time Lord in check. That she bookends the entire episode is entirely fitting and like 'Rose' the story is told from her point of view. It's important that she remains the audience identification figure. The way Freema handles much of this in the episode is an indication that we're in safe hands.

Tennant's Doctor seems a little more world weary here. You get the sense he's been travelling alone for a while but I do think there was too heavy an emphasis on the 'seduction' of Martha to his lifestyle. There was a feeling of him shopping around for his next companion in this and the scene in the alley did have an odd predatory, sexual undertone that didn't belong to the series. However, overlooking this aspect, Tennant's performance throughout was confident and boisterous without recourse to some of the over-acting in the earlier parts of Series 2. The tone has shifted and he's picking up and recycling little physical ticks and speech patterns that are uniquely his own with a good deal of sensitivity. I really got a sense of his Doctor this time round.

And Anne Reid was both funny and frightening as Florence. Her lip-smacking performance was pitched just right and she clearly homed in on the requirements of the script with Russell's typical volte face of wit and horror.

On the production front we've moved up a notch again. Fantastic work from the boys at The Mill especially the fetishistic, phallic Judoon spaceships landing on the Moon which then carried through to the rhinos in leather look of the costumes. Great prosthetics from Millennium and Neil Gorton but it was obvious that the budget only allowed them to have one helmet-less Judoon in the story. And Murray Gold...will this man ever stop coming up with the goods? Lovely music, gorgeous theme for Martha which I'm sure will have many iterations over the coming weeks and some finely judged solo strings amongst the bombast of the Judoon's marching themes.

Overall, then...bureaucratic rhinos from outer space taking the free market to extraordinary lengths to try and keep their statistics up to date, identity theft from a little old lady called Florence and the Doctor's symbolic death and re-birth as witnessed by one Martha Jones. The fact that Russell T Davies juggled that lot and threw laughs aplenty in there too is quite astonishing. Plus some prefiguring of the coming darkness, an indication that the Doctor did have a 'brother' and Martha's take on the TARDIS as a spaceship made of wood.

Lovely.

After the hit and mostly miss of season two, I surprisingly found myself excited about the approach of season three. Perhaps with Torchwood and Primeval in the background, suddenly there seemed to be more fantasy TV on the box than for a long time.

Fortunately Smith and Jones, the season opener, was solid enjoyable fare that did a good job of fleshing out what a 21st century vision of Doctor Who could be like for a family audience. With an ambitious premise the views of a hospital block on the moon, yes on the bloody moon, were well done and overall this clever production looked great. The landing of the Judoon spacecraft was wonderful, although I couldn't help thinking the lunar landscape looked more 2001 Space Odyssey rather than the real vistas of the Apollo missions. One nice touch was the reaction of the hospital inhabitants to their new locale ? a slow realisation followed by sheer terror. So many other productions depict people bravely soldiering on in these situations when of course if this sort of thing actually happened, most people would go rather mad. It did a good job of notching up the tension.

The Judoon, intergalactic coppers, were well done although fairly simplistic. Along with setting it in an actual hospital, with a lot of already built corridors to run down, the showing of only one trooper's actual face was clear cost cutting. Just one more rhino face would have helped dispell this rather obvious budgeting. But they looked great, although this fanboy longed for Sontarans instead, who would have been far more frightening and evil.

The snappy little plot with a not quite sinister enough villian worked well enough. The one major problem I had was that there were worries to begin with that once the Judoon found the alien they wanted, they would destroy the hospital and everyone in it for harbouring their quarry. But this never resurfaces and the Judoon handily transport the hospital back to Earth and everything is well again.

The performances are consistent and the new companion is rather good as well as rather gorgeous. David Tennant's performance is restrained compared to some of his previous, perhaps rather irritating, outings as the Doctor with only the scene with the radiation escaping from his foot giving cause for concern. This scene just doesn't work. In another scene he mentions that he once had a brother and whilst with Christopher Eccleston's Doctor (think of that tear in Episode 2 of Season 1) these moments were always a breathtaking revelation, with David it never quite has the same power.

And at the end we have the Doctor seduce his new companion into travelling with him after she undergoes an unsatisfying episode in her own domestic situation. An exact parallel with the same scene in Rose, it suggests a Doctor who travels the cosmos in his high powered time machine to pick up chicks. "Did I mention, it also travels in time", the Doctor almost says in what was presumably an exercise in cutting and pasting for the writer.

But overall, great fun and easily the most satisfying start to a new season for the new Who.

Taken on its own terms, this was probably the strongest of the three season openers so far. The idea of the huge hospital building suddenly appearing on the moon made for an arresting image (even if the ensuing hysterics didn't really ring true), and the big rhino fellahs looked great and had a real purpose, rather than just being ?baddies' killing for the sake of it. Anne Reid was deliciously evil too - the Doctor sacrificing himself to pollute her essence was an interesting plot point. (The reference to Planet Zovirax will be meaningless to anyone unfamiliar with a very specific British commercial about a cold-sore cream). This was definitely a better episode than the reheated-feeling Runaway Bride, with Martha Jones probably the most tolerable of the three female new series companions so far. The Doctor latching onto the resourceful and imaginative Martha, while rejecting her friend clearly not up to his standards, was nicely done and gave us a good window into his workings.

But there is a niggling feeling of this all now being done to a formula. On a superficial level the story shares a lot of elements with last year's opener New Earth ? the hospital setting, the animal-headed aliens, peoples' essences being passed around and jumbled up; but deeper than that, it just all felt very familiar. It's Russell T. Davies by numbers ? albeit a good, well-made and enjoyable example of Russell T. Davies by numbers ? rather than Russell T. Davies pushing the envelope and tearing down the boundaries. It didn't leave me with that, "wow, I just watched a brand new Doctor Who" feeling. I was a big RTD supporter during the first two seasons, but now it's time to see what else he can do. Could he give us a Robots Of Death or a Warrior's Gate or a Mind Robber or a Carvival Of Monsters? Or are stories about aliens arriving in London or Cardiff and making ordinary people panic as far as his talent stretches? Now I think back to his impressive (if badly concluded) drama Second Coming, it did contain many of the elements familiar from any average RTD Doctor Who story.

Worse still was the "next time" trailer ? yet another historical featuring an iconic figure early on in the run. For a show whose possibilities are so limitless, it seems ridiculous to do it to such a strict template.

That said, there was a lot to enjoy about this episode. The family stuff was kept to a refreshing minimum (though RTD would do well to remember that the UK population isn't comprised entirely of these kind of people, no matter how hard he wants to appeal to the EastEnders-loving masses ? a bit of variety would be nice), and the plot rattled along at a decent pace with some nice twists and turns. But it really really is time to see some worlds of wonder now and less dull ordinary British people. Heck, even a story set in a village would be nice. For all his talents, Russell has an extremely narrow view of the world, the universe and especially Britain.

There's an old saying that what is past is prologue. That goes not only for the twenty-six years Doctor Who was a television staple, but also for the past two years, when spirits were high and Rose Tyler kicked Dalek butt across the cosmos and back. Indeed, Rose is now such a distant memory, it seems, that the one time her name comes up in "Smith and Jones" it feels like one of those fanwanky nods to the past that people complain about ten years on and everyone's moved away from the table toward other, more current pastures.

"Smith and Jones" feels like the start of a new era, and rightfully so. It's not merely because there's a new occupant in the TARDIS -- we've done that already, and almost did the same this past Christmas. Rather, it's as if there was a great big balloon that was blown up over the past two years, "Doomsday" popped it and "The Runaway Bride" was stretching out the new one, ready to start it all over again. We have a different sensibility, a more mature Doctor in control (and I realize how that sounds; it's merely because Tennant was so new to the role last year, it almost felt like he was getting his boots wet over the course of the year.) There are many of the same trappings -- the TARDIS is still familiar, we still have the Doctor saving the world and even a ratty old family thrown in for good measure. But there's something different about the start of the third series; maybe it's a different method of storytelling, or simply a different ambience to the series now that Freema Agyeman's joined the show.

Freema is the heartbeat of the episode; it's from her character, Martha Jones, that we gain our point of view. We don't know why the Doctor's here at the hospital, or why in the world she saw him out on the street (a clever plot device that, granted, might have been more interesting if they hadn't explained it so thoroughly at the end of the episode.) We're left to the Doctor's explanation of the Judoon, without so much as a reason for why these intergalactic rhinos are so amazingly stubborn that they'll kill on sight without any thought for mercy, but will gladly hold a hospital full of people captive and then plunk it back down on Earth without so much as an apology for the inconvenience. (I'm sure I wasn't the only person for whom the word Vogon passed through one's mind.) She's the anti-Rose; she's not as wide-eyed and innocent as her predecessor, a bit more worldly, and seems to know the face of adversity. (Try living with that family for a week; you'd be battle-hardened in no time.) Whereas one of Billie Piper's strengths was knowing when to demonstrate independence and when to show deference to the Doctor, Freema Agyeman portrays a woman willing to stand on her own two feet, willing to draw the line in the sand -- whether a good idea or not. She has no idea why the Judoon have come, or why Anne Reid's creepy Mrs. Finnegan is sucking blood through a straw, but one has to wonder if she really cares exactly why it's happening or just wants it to stop altogether. In this way, Freema seems like more of a match for Tennant, whereas in my mind Piper's suitability was always with Christopher Eccleston. She might just be exactly what this incarnation of the Doctor needs.

Tennant is more calm, more assured, and has quite clearly taken the role of the Doctor as his own. There are far fewer moments of unconvincing histrionics, and Tennant demonstrates more confidence, especially on the lighter, sillier side; last year, it might have merely seemed goofy that the Doctor was sitting in his pajamas in a hospital bed, but this time around it feels right. Combined with the more sophisticated companion Agyeman plays, it feels like there are really two leads running with the series. (That shouldn't be taken as a knock against Piper, who I always felt was one of the strongest parts of the first series; it was just that last year, being relegated so often to the 'damsel in distress' role or the far-too-cheeky irreverence that really ruined parts of "Tooth and Claw" for me, Rose had become a fundamentally different character, and I'm not sure that was the smartest idea.)

"Smith and Jones" also has a very different feel to its production. Charles Palmer's direction is far more confident than the touch-and-go moments of the series' first two years; making use of an actual hospital is fine, but when it actually FEELS like it's been transported to the moon instead of simply making us understand that it is, and forget all the logic faults, one can appreciate the subtleties (darkened lighting, clever edits and so forth) a director, editor and cinematographer must use. The CGI this time is limited solely to events that aid the production instead of overtake it, and in fact the only time I felt slightly letdown was the unnecessary pan from overhead on the lines of Judoon leaving their ships, which wasn't as flawless as one would hope. Speaking of the Judoon: very nicely done in design and development, and fantastic work on the prosthetics, although a bit derivative of the Vogons as I mentioned before. (I do have to wonder, though, if the Sontarans were the original series aliens rumored to be part of the start of this season, but they couldn't be used for rights reasons. No matter.)

Whilst Anne Reid's deliciously daffy portrayal of Mrs. Finnegan works beautifully in this episode, and the only problem with Roy Marsden's hospital administrator is that he's not given nearly as much screen time as one would hope, the over-the-top portrayal of Martha's family feels a bit forced. We've done the whole 'Piper clan' thing the past two years; I understand the reasons why the production team might wish to 'ground' the Doctor with the anchor his companion's life provides, but coming so quickly on the heels of the last family-who-became-familiar, it's unnecessary. The Doctor, after all, managed to ground himself to Earth for twenty-six seasons of the original series; he's tied to planet Earth, he doesn't need a reason to come back. (Especially to London or Cardiff!) Apart from this, some nice little references here and there both answer to the past as well as set up things for the future: the one-liner about Agyeman's past as a guest player, the "Vote Saxon" stuff that's being set up for later this year, and so forth. And what's this about the Doctor's brother…?

Trivialities aside, "Smith and Jones" breathes new life and a new sense of direction into Doctor Who. Martha Jones is a welcome addition to the TARDIS crew, and one hopes Agyeman will be able to handle herself as a foil to Tennant's Doctor with as much ease as she's demonstrated here. Never a fan of last year's season opener (which I still feel is easily the weakest episode of the new series), "Smith and Jones" was far more to my liking. It's a new dawn for the Doctor and his rackety old TARDIS, and I can't wait to see how this new season plays out over the next few months.


(For my reviews of the first two series, see my books "Back To The Vortex" and "Second Flight: Back to the Vortex II" available from Telos Publishing.)

There was one moment where Smith and Jones had me worried. It came when the Doctor was discharging the radiation from his body after having killed the Slab with the x-ray machine. I had a horrible, horrible feeling from the way he was standing and talking that he was going to discharge the radiation by way of passing wind. I was cringing ready for it, but mercifully my fears proved groundless, and we ended up with the rather jolly bit about looking silly in one shoe.

That was the only worry. The rest of the episode was excellent ? probably the best series opener the show has had since its return. Probably since Remembrance of the Daleks, in fact. Rose was excellent and vital in making the comeback a success, but Smith and Jones takes on board all of the lessons the production team had learned over the previous two series and uses them to hit us with a sharp, exciting, witty and energetic curtain-raiser that really gets series three going on a high.

It is interesting to note, though, that the episode had much in common with Rose, also being a kind of relaunch now that Billie Piper has left. This was underlined by it being the only episode since that March 2005 opener not to have a pre-titles sequence, plunging us straight into the theme music and then into the world of Miss Martha Jones. Davies quickly sketched out her character's family background for us via the phone conversations, and then dropped a nice dollop of mystery into things with the Doctor's brief time-bending appearance ? surely the first time in Doctor Who's history where the companion and the Doctor have first met each other at different times.

I wasn't too sure what to expect from Freema Agyeman. Her brief role in Army of Ghosts was the only thing I'd seen her acting in before, and while she played that part perfectly well, there wasn't really enough for her to do to show how she might fare as a companion. Certainly all of her press interviews and appearances have displayed an infectious charm and enthusiasm for the show and her role, but as the opening titles faded away it was still a bit of a mystery just how well she might do in what's now one of the highest-profile roles on British television.

Well, she was fantastic, to coin a phrase. I took to the character of Martha Jones pretty much instantly; I liked Rose Tyler, but even after only one episode I have the suspicion I will like Martha Jones a lot more. That's not to denigrate Piper at all ? she did a wonderful job and was a major part of the success of the show's resurrection ? but Agyeman's Martha seems to be very much a Sarah Jane Smith to the Jo Grant of Piper's Rose. More independent, a little more grown-up and generally a bit sassier and more dynamic, she was great throughout and promises to be an excellent foil for the Tenth Doctor. I'm sure her "We're on the bloody moon!" exclamation will become one of the most oft-quoted lines from this series.

Speaking of which, the whole business of going to the moon and so forth was equally terrific. The lifting of the hospital, the CGI images of the building sitting there alone on the lunar landscape, the Judoon ships? Great, big, exciting, iconic sci-fi images that really gave this series-opener a sense of the different and the slightly epic. Space Rhinos! On the Moon! As the Doctor himself excitedly points out when trying to pass off as human to the Plasmavore, this is weird, crazy stuff. Exactly the sort of thing Doctor Who does best.

Another feather in the cap of Doctor Who ? particularly modern Doctor Who ? has been prosthetic creature creation, and the Judoon leader was a magnificent achievement, so well done that I don't think you ever really noticed too much that the others (all five of them!) never took their helmets off so as to avoid the cost of building another mask. I liked the general concept of the Judoon too ? mercenary galactic policemen with a quick and harsh system of justice, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them crop up again in the future. Indeed, I very much hope that they do.

There'd been a bit of sleight of hand in the trailers and publicity which gave the impression that the Judoon were perhaps the main adversaries in this episode, so it was a nice twist that the evil-of-the-week was actually Anne Reid's batty old Plasmavore in human form. Reid is always good value in any of her roles ? indeed, the whole guest cast this week was very strong, I would say ? and I liked the comic touch of her bendy straw. It has to be admitted, however, that the weak part of the episode's plot was the super-strength MRI machine. However, real science has never been a strong point of Doctor Who, and I'm prepared to let that one pass, especially given the fact that ? like Rose ? this episode's plot didn't matter anywhere near as much as its introduction of the new companion to the Doctor did, and in that task it succeeded admirably.

There are a few other niggles here and there, mind you. What was the point in destroying the sonic screwdriver only for the Doctor to have got himself a brand new one by the end of the episode? I don't dislike the screwdriver as much as some do, but it would have been interesting to see how he managed to cope without it as his get-out-of-jail-free card for a few episodes. I also didn't like the Doctor's stumbling remembrance of Rose at the end, as he's talking to Martha in the TARDIS ? it felt a bit artificial somehow, the same was as it did back in The Runaway Bride when he had similar moments with Donna. I suppose it's really because I was never a fan of the way the character of Rose was shown to have made such an apparently big impact on him, but that's a very personal sort of reaction and not something Davies and the production team can really be criticised for.

There were extra little positives lying around as well as the niggles, however. I was intrigued by the Doctor's throwaway mention of having previously had a brother. I have no idea whether this is going to prove to be in some way relevant in the long run or not ? I suspect not ? but I always enjoy these little off-handedly mentioned bits of continuity, scraps of dialogue that offer glimpses of the history of the Doctor without really giving any answers. Anything that increases the mystery and enigma of the character and his origins is all right by me.

Something that seemingly is going to prove more relevant is the character of ?Mr Saxon', first seen mentioned on a newspaper back in Love & Monsters, referred to again in The Runaway Bride and now talked about on the radio here, as well as ?Vote Saxon' posters being prominently on display. I know that Saxon is to be played by John Simm towards the season's end, but who or what exactly he might be is an interesting little mystery. We all have our ideas, of course, but once again it seems there's to be a nice little element of mystery simmering away across the background of this series' episodes.

Which is as it should be. Doctor Who, for me, has always been about strange mysteries, engaging characters and exciting adventure stories. Smith and Jones had all of these things, and for my money was a fine opener to what promises to be, if this standard is maintained and perhaps even built upon, a fine set of episodes.

No doubt there was a time when a whimsical pun would have been relegated to the closet of odd working titles prior to a more suitable title for a Who story being thought up. Instead, we get the working title for the title, while the far better one, Baptism of Fire, is filed away.

Smith and Jones then kicks of Season Three in fairly typical RTD fashion: an impossibly far-fetched plot interspersed with utterly irrelevant and irritating contemporary soap, lots of running up and down corridors (ironic, as that's often what the classic show was criticised for), some token flirting with (new) companion, a totally inappropriate snog with said companion, equally inappropriate sexual innuendo (re the ?fetish' aspect of the all-leather androids), big chunky aliens with no back-story (whose leather-clad bulks just beg the question, why not just bring back the Sontarans, rather than a bunch of Rhinos with a stupid language?), lots of spectacle and explosion, a wacky, near-demented, Jarvis Cocker-Doctor who seems perpetually cranked into a post-regeneration personality crisis, and, well, everything else?

In the scenes with the Doctor sat up scrawny and bulging-eyed like a medley of Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams in one of the hospital Carry On films, I kept thinking, what is it about Tennant's obviously enthusiastic and quirky attempt at portraying the Timelord that jars with me? I still can't quite put my finger on it, but I think he's falling into the trap that Colin Baker fell into (also, interestingly, a Who fan prior to playing the part): overt enthusiasm. This isn't good. The brilliance of Tom Baker, for instance, was that he didn't make his enthusiasm so obvious, and actually originally often underplayed the part, frequently subdued and convincingly alien for that, so when his occasional quirky outbursts came, they resonated all the more for the contrast. Tennant's mistake is that he cranks up the wackiness and eccentricity too much and too frequently, so that one almost itches with irritation, just aching for his Doctor to play a bit for subtlety now and then. He does sometimes, and when he does, he is at his most likeable and convincing. Unfortunately, for a Doctor who resembles a slightly geeky Science under-graduate, there really is no need for extra eye-bulging, limb-flailing, and general impersonations of a stick-insect on speed. Tone it down, David, for God's sake.

The continual hyperbole regarding Tenant's portrayal must, I think, be taken with a large pinch of salt: it's all spin, something New Who has in common with New Labour, and the attempt at sexing-up the Doctor is part of this pumping up of the part, and its current incumbent. David Tennant is certainly a good Doctor, when he's allowed to be, but anyone with any remote knowledge of the classic series will know that on many levels his incarnation falls far short of at least three or four of the old Doctors. Compared to Troughton, Pertwee or Tom Baker, Tennant is still in the playground in terms of portrayal ? he is still promising in places, but his exaggerated youthfulness in appearance and approach sits as awkwardly with ?attempted gravitas' as McCoy's clownish physiognomy and clumsy articulation once did (though the latter eventually mastered the darkness of the part in stories such as The Curse of Fenric). Tennant could also do with a touch of Davison's well-gauged subtlety and underplaying too.

The hype is already spreading about the new companion Martha, possibly due to insecurity at the ? in my view, belated ? departure of Billie Piper. So far Martha seems to me a fairly run-of-the-mill companion, whose apparent special ?something' in actress Freema Agyeman (sic) coincides with almost air-brushed good looks. Time will tell. But let's have less of the teenagery flirting with the Doctor.

Good touches this episode? Not many, sadly. A bit of a New Earth-syndrome going on here: too much of a potpourri of only half-explored ideas and concepts thrown together into a bit of mess of a plot (a potpourri plot indeed) ? ironic considering RTD referred to Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop in the same way. Mmmm, what is it the philosophers said RTD? Know thyself? The upwards rain was a nice touch, the Judoon (very Star Wars-sounding name again) looked convincing if a little bit like extras from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a very Vogon-like bureaucratic approach and lumbering sense of ?justice'. Roy Marsden led a bit of dramatic leaven to proceedings, though was sadly under-used and killed off too early by a very Rezzie-esque Anne Reid as a plazmavore whom we never actually see in her true form ? having to make do with a weird old lady in pyjamas with a straw in her mouth. The straw was a bit of a silly touch I thought, so very RTD in that sense.

So, not much else to say on this rather ludicrous episode of New Who except that which was ominously chanted ten years previously by New Labour: Things Can Only Get Better? surely?

3/10