The supreme rule of all great drama is "start small and build." The more fantastic and convention-breaking the drama, the more important I believe this rule is. If you're going to, for example, write a story about a girl being whisked by a tornado into a bonkers fantasy over-the-rainbow land, you must start out with her being very ordinary (yet appealing) and with her in her hum-drum ordinary world, or the general audience is never going to swallow the enormous gobstopper you've got coming for them later on. The previous attempt to restart "Doctor Who" in 1996 got this very muddled. I'm extremely happy to see that in 2005, the lesson has been learned and the new attempt is off to a great start.

In "Rose," what we have in many ways is a condensed and extremely updated version of "The Wizard of Oz," with Rose herself in the Dorothy role, and the Doctor of course being the Wizard figure (except he's authentic, unlike the Oz Wizard). "Oz" itself we haven't really got to yet... that yellow brick time vortex is yet to be travelled, and will no doubt be the point of the 12 episodes which will follow, but some of Oz's denizens did pay Rose and the Doctor a call in the familiar form (well, familiar to "Doctor Who" fans) of the Nestenes and their Autons, making at least their third attempt to take over the Earth.

If you see what the story's doing, introducing everyone to Rose, the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the sort of things the Doctor gets mixed up in, then yes, the story is predictable and may even seem thin. This is especially true if we make the mistake of comparing this story to the complexities of the stories we've been used to in the non-TV years from Big Finish, Virgin, or BBC Books. Those forms can all tell their stories in shorthand because their audience understands the code. This first paragraph of the new TV era has to go the long way around for the sake of the 10 million uninitiated who may (and did) watch.

And to that I say, "so what if it does?" Once in a while, I like to just stop and think about the entire basic concept of the show and revel in the majesty of its imagination, and the heights to which an author, a cast, a design team, and a director can leap to from this most powerful springboard of a format. We have an alien who looks like us but isn't us, who loves us and defends us and can sometimes hate us too, who can take one of us anywhere in the universe to any date there's ever been or ever will be, using the most fantastic and entertaining spaceship ever imagined. Isn't that enough right there? Maybe by episode 34 we might tire even of this, but this is _episode_one_. It's called "Doctor Who - Rose." It's job is to introduce both "Rose" and "Doctor Who" in a way that will keep loads of viewers watching and wanting to tune in again next week. Nothing more and nothing less. Oh, and it's only got 44 minutes or so to do it in.

In this job it succeeds brilliantly. It starts by simply showing us Rose, and within five minutes, Billie Piper's charm and acting chops have got step one nailed. She then bumps into some Oz-like elements in the form of a gang of Autons, and gets rescued in spectacular fashion by the Wizard - Doctor.

Ah, but we're not over the rainbow yet... this story pauses to let Rose and the viewer stop and think about it all while we see more of Rose's real life, namely her mother and boyfriend and home, and get to know her and how normal and nice she is some more, and we're also shown here a little of her stronger side when she clearly stands up on her own against her mother and boyfriend. Then along come Oz and the Wizard again, invading her home briefly, and getting her curiosity going. The rest of the story continues in a similar pattern, of her moving two steps down the yellow brick road in curiosity, a step back in fear, another step forward in bravery and another step more in curiosity, then another step back. For example, she goes to see Clive and starts to swallow what he tells her, until he says the word "alien" and then she pulls back. The two biggest forward-back-forward moves she does are when she first enters the TARDIS, goes back out and walks around it, then goes back inside again, and at the very end of the story when she at first turns the Doctor down on his offer to become his latest companion, then changes her mind when he gives her a second chance. This makes Rose into a perfect companion, and every inch the Dorothy figure this episode 1 needed. Billie Piper plays it all perfectly too, switching back and forth between fear for herself or for maybe-dead-real-Mickey to excitement and enthusiasm for the weird and wonderful things she's seeing without it ever looking jarring, illogical, or non-authentic.

Right, that's Dorothy down... what of the Wizard? So far, so good. Christopher Eccleston is doing what all the Doctors have done (and should do) and fusing the writing of the basic uber-intelligent, energetic, and curious Doctor coming from the writer's script with his own character traits, such as his speech patterns, jovial body language, and that goofy grin he loves to use. There are two moments in particular that marked out this new Doctor to me the most, one small and one BIG[tm]. The small one is during the bit where he is trying to leave Rose's life with the Auton arm and she's quizzing him on who he is, and after she asks "just the Doctor?" yet again, he quickly turns, flashes that grin, waves a hand at her high in the air and says, "Helllooo!" That's the sort of tangential humor I love to see in the Doctor. The BIG moment, as anyone who watched can probably guess, is when shortly after that he takes Rose's hand and talks to her about how he can feel the Earth turning and revolving around the sun and how at any moment we could all just fall off the planet. Both the writing and the performance fuse together flawlessly here and give us a verbal sense of the awe that a man like the Doctor must feel whenever he pauses while travelling and takes stock of the whole universe around him... and that we will hopefully get to see visually in future episodes. There is of course still a lot of room for more Doctor development, but again, this is only episode _one_, and that will all come when the time is right, I feel sure.

That leaves Oz, which consists of the TARDIS, the Nestene-Autons, and also the hints of an over-arching story arc and a backstory "war" that the Doctor says he fought in and which seems to have displaced the Nestenes. The TARDIS is so far handled very well, where they show us its basic abilities and properties and save its even more fantastic features for later. Again, they're starting small and building, and I can be patient. As for the Nestene-Autons... well, they're almost a sort of token villain here. We don't learn anything more about them than we did in their previous stories, and if anything, they seem to have regressed a bit in their tactics, being not able to make a very convincing Mickey replica, although to be fair, they did it very quickly and it was good enough to fool Rose, which is all it needed to do. They look, behave, and sound just as nasty as they did before, and the "mother" creature sure looks a lot better than the 1970 and 1971 ones did. The addition of child-sized Autons to their ranks was a great touch, as was the reuse of their classic sound effects, but I'm not sure they were directed all that well. They could've been much creepier than they turned out to be, and while I did find the comedy that they found in them to actually be funny, I think I prefer them when they're behaving more competently. They are not actually the point of this story of course... they're just there to be a "typical" foil to the Doctor's usual exploits, and in that they succeed just about well enough. (a bit like how the Cybermen, a Dalek, and a Yeti weren't the point in "The Five Doctors") That final element of the arc and the backstory gave us just enough to whet our appetites for future episodes, and was the perfect dash of salt for this great recipe of a show.

Story and acting-wise then I was very pleased, and pleased enough with the direction. Keith Boak seems to have got the most important things right (the Doctor, Rose, the guest cast, and the London setting), and what he got wrong (the Autons, and one or two other small missteps) wasn't all that wrong. Where I noticed his presence the most was in the pacing of it all, especially the opening act, and how much faster it was certainly than the older stories and even than other shows made today. A steady diet of this probably wouldn't be good for the whole series, but the way it was used here was very good I thought, and key in grabbing and holding that new audience's attention I'm sure.

The overall look of the finished show was better than I expected and better than the little bits I'd seen earlier on... it's very vibrant and bright and quite film-like looking, but I do still regret the decision not to shoot on either a film format or an HD-ready digital video format as this means the series' format is going to be out of date in just a few years time. I didn't mind the "techno" nature of the incidental music, just the choice of where to put it sometimes and the choice of the effect that was being gone for, which may have been out of Murray Gold's hands and in Keith Boak's. One moment in particular I didn't care for was when Rose is creeping in the cellar and the Autons are starting to awake and there's suddenly a string movement put in as though Julie Andrews is about to come bounding in with "The Sound of Music". It defused the tension instead of increasing it. (Graham Norton didn't help here either of course!) What of the much-talked-about CGI? I found it a lot more convincing with the full filmizing effect on this finished version than I did on some poorer-converted clips I saw before this, and really rather impressive in places, with the one glaring exception of the wheely-bin scene. The bit where Mickey first puts his hands on it and they stick is OK... it's what follows when the whole bin starts to undulate and open its "mouth" that looks completely unreal and not at all convincing. I've no idea what such a thing really would look like, but I can tell it wouldn't look like this... there's a sort of cartoon-like sheen to the bin at this point that completely sets it at odds with the rest of the image here. Everything else looked fine, especially the explosions (some of which were done with models I'm told... always a good move in my book), and I do want to save a special mention for the new way in which the TARDIS materializes and dematerializes, with its solidity pulsing back and forth along with the lamp on the top of the police box. Top marks also for taking the trouble to getting the sound effects exactly right and using the remastered versions provided by Mark Ayres on the Radiophonic Workshop CDs. I should also mention what I think of Murray Gold's arrangement of the theme music.... I very much like this approach he's taken, of mixing the original Delia Derbyshire-generated swooping sounds with instrumental ones in the gaps between. It's a little-remembered fact that this was in fact Ron Grainer's original intention with the original music... that Derbyshire would create these sounds that he'd then put real instruments behind them, which he abandoned when he heard the finished product she'd created, but it's nice to hear that approach actually taken and used here. I have to deduct lots of points though for his not including the "b" section/middle-8 section of the theme, which is my favorite part. I can only hope that it might turn up on a future episode (as it sometimes did in the original series... sometimes it would pop up and sometimes it wouldn't be there) or at the very least on a commercial CD release.

Scale of 1 to 10 for "Rose"... 8. Exactly what we needed, plus a bit more besides... I wouldn't say perfect, but in all the important ways, this was exactly what episode one of this new series should be. Next stop... the emerald city at the end of the world ?

7pm, Saturday 26th March 2005. If you count from the end of the television series, it’s over 15 years since the Doctor left our screens. It’s nine years since the TV movie. For me, it’s been just over five years since I’ve been enough of a Doctor Who fan to dream of the show’s return to television. It’s been 18 months since the announcement that Doctor Who was, finally, being regenerated for a new series. However you count it, we’ve waited a long time for this moment. But at last, it’s time…

One of the first things to strike me was the sheer breathless pace and energy of the story. The first few scenes quickly show us Rose’s life in a nutshell, though it then settles down to a more sensible speed. It’s still a million times zippier than the frequently slow plod of the long stories of Doctor Who from years gone by, and is quite an adjustment to make.

It’s been observed that the TV movie was a blend of Spearhead from Space, the story that saw both the debut of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor and of the sinister Autons, The Deadly Assassin, where the Doctor returned to his home planet to battle his old enemy the Master, and a bit of original material thrown in as well. But while the TV movie borrowed the Doctor’s alien physiology being discovered as he is treated in hospital, Rose takes the other, more exciting plotline that the TV movie left alone - the invasion of Earth by the delightfully scary Autons. Russell T Davies wisely chooses to define the Doctor by what he does - fight the monsters and save the world, rather than dull discoveries of two hearts and an odd body temperature.

Rose also jettisons any Gallifrey-bound backstory while popping in fun little moments that remind us that this is the very same Doctor and the very same show. Some hints about a new backstory are dropped, too. The references to a war in which the Doctor fought and planets which he was unable save are blatant signposts for the fans shouting “Start speculating here!” Robert Holmes, who created the Autons, had a knack of sketching in intriguing pointers to a wider universe, and Russell T Davies borrows this trick with intriguing and very cool sounding details such as the War and the Shadow Convention.

The actual invasion plot is rather slight, and there are some unexplained gaps in the plot, but part of the point of the story is to show events from the outside. For most people who encounter him, the Doctor is a mysterious figure who appears and disappears amid the confusion of bizarre and dangerous events. But through her curiosity and persistence, Rose manages to make her way into the Doctor’s world.

This sense of looking in from the outside is the point of the character of Clive. I loved the scenes with him. Just look at Russell’s other works like Dark Season and The Second Coming and you’ll see he does this apocalyptic style of dialogue so well, and Mark Benton pulls it off wonderfully. I thought the makers perhaps missed a trick by not craftily foreshadowing some of the later episodes set in the past. I was also half expecting Clive to produce a picture showing Rose accompanying the Doctor, which would have been an interesting complication. I think it also appealed because it was one of the few parts of the story which hadn’t been given away through spoilers or informed speculation, nor lifted from the Autons’ previous outings. It’s also a fun comment on the Internet-savvy age of the Fan. 

Speaking of fun, one of the best things about the show is the delicious sense of humour. I’d seen the clip from the wonderful wheelie-bin scene on Blue Peter on Monday. It had me in stitches then, and it was probably the single thing that most convinced me that the new series was going to be fun. It’s even better in the context of the story, being both hilariously funny and creepily disturbing. It’s not popular with those who think Doctor Who should be dark and serious and adult, but can you really imagine a show like that gripping the hearts and imaginations of children and adults up and down the country? I can’t, but the show as it is seems perfectly pitched to do just that.

Much of the magic lies in the two leads, the Doctor and Rose Tyler. Any concerns I might have had about Billie Piper just disappeared away as if they’d never existed, and I was too caught up in the story to be distracted by thoughts of her past career as a pop star. And as for the Doctor: Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor is energetic, funny, eccentric and scary, rather like the show itself. Russell T Davies’ interesting drama The Second Coming now seems like a dress rehearsal for the new series of Doctor Who, since it shares both writer, lead actor and composer. But although Eccleston’s turn as the Son of God had its light-hearted moments, as the Doctor he brings both the manic intensity and a much greater levity to the role. The structure of the story is more like a romance than anything else, and by the end I was desperately rooting for the Doctor and Rose to “get together” by her joining him on his journeys through time and space!

The TARDIS set is beautiful and impressive, and when Rose came in and the camera swung up and round to reveal it all to us, I wished I had a bigger television. It felt like watching cinematic spectacle on the small screen. The organic feel gives the impression of some alien force or creature with the merest crumbling veneer of technology. I’m not sure I like the way it enters directly into the control room - it makes the inside seem more exposed, more vulnerable. That’s probably a good thing, but it takes some getting used to.

Some people have slated the special effects, but if you want super-impressive (and super-expensive) effects, then Doctor Who is probably not the best place to look. They were just the job to tell the story, and didn’t need to be photorealistic to do this. They were of a good enough level not to detract at all, and to try and make them match the movies or American productions wouldn’t really have made the episode any better. It would simply have been a way for the BBC to shout “Look how much money we’re spending!” If people are put off because the show isn’t flaunting a big budget in this way, then I don’t think they’re much of a loss to fandom. Another prime target for criticism is the incidental music. I thought it was pretty good, myself, though for the most time I didn’t particularly notice it, which seems to me to be a good indicator of being unintrusive. 

The Autons themselves were suitably scary. I didn’t hide behind the sofa - it’s right back against the wall, and though my family discussed moving it forward to give us room, we didn’t get round to it. But I was hiding myself in my jumper as they began their attack, peeping out from between my fingers!

All my family watched the new show, and all of them enjoyed it. This includes my Dad, who doesn’t really like science fiction or fantasy type stuff, and my younger sisters aged 14 and 17. My younger sister usually considers herself too cool for things like Doctor Who. Her boyfriend loved it, so she’s now having to face the horrifying prospect that he might become a Doctor Who fan! The buzz from those I’ve talked to, in real life and over the Internet in various places, is one of genuine enjoyment and excitement. As the credits rolled, I grinned a big happy grin, knowing that up and down the country, a whole new generation had been enjoying Doctor Who for the first time.

Rose wasn’t the greatest piece of television in the world, which may disappoint some overexcited fans, but will probably please those doom-mongers who have convinced themselves the new series can never match the old. But it was one of the most exciting, energetic, confident and just plain enjoyable programmes on TV, and has all the humour, excitement and thrills for all the family to enjoy it. There’s nothing else like it on television, and it’s great to have Doctor Who back

‘Rose’ and its introduction of a very new style of Who seems to me to have overdone the modernisation of the programme, seeming like a disturbing parallel to the Blairite transformation of Labour: slick, soundbite-ish and full of spin (i.e. the trailers and RTD’s almost Stalinist grip on the series’ protocol and commercial representation). But I suppose, like New Labour, New Who still inevitably retains at least some vague traces of its Old ideology: chiefly a central character who – give or take a bit of pugilism here and a bit of unsubstantiated gadgetry there – still stands for brain over brawn. But in this first episode, this wasn’t enough. Eccleston presented us with a – fresh or blustery – break with past interpretations of the role with his ordinariness of appearance and very contemporary, Joe average vernacular. Yes, he displayed welcome eccentricity and Troughtonesque impishness, especially regarding his waving “Hello” when Rose repeated his name to him as they walked down a street. Eccleston retains some of the alienness of Tom Baker too. However, whilst an essentially working-class style Doctor with a pronounced – nay, even exaggerated – Northern accent is arguably a belated evolution of the character from his more middle-class, dilettante past selves, it is at least ostensibly nothing new: McCoy, the last substantial TV Doctor, pioneered this with his blatant, consonant-trammelling Scottish accent. I say ostensibly as McCoy did not in turn play on this as some sort of subtle inverted-snobbishness when up against aliens with received pronunciation: his occasional stumbling on lines was more to do with his own peculiar style of speech which was arguably a slight impediment. Eccleston’s Doctor seems to revel in his regional accent to such an extent that his articulation sounds sometimes a little lazy and self-consciously t-dropping which to me seems pointless and – whether we woolly-headed liberals like it or not – almost implausible, especially for a Gallifreyan (and I used to suspend disbelief with Drax’s cockney accent in Armageddon Factor). We can only assume the ninth Doctor has spent much time up north before coming to London – although he has also apparently recently regenerated (“well, could have been worse”; “look at the ears” etc.), quite muddling considering the revelations of his web-tracer that he has appeared in photographs from various times and places in the past and future in this incarnation!). His retort to Rose that “most planets have a north” in no way explains his blatant regional accent does it? Are we to assume that Northerners on Gallifrey, by some strange quirk of parallel linguistic evolution, developed Salford accents? To me this is just whimsical and sloppy scripting. The need for his accent to be picked up on in the narrative invites these sorts of criticisms when no believable explanation is forthcoming – again it seems simply symptomatic of the terrestrialisation of the show, which is needless.

As for the Doctor’s ‘look’. Whilst the toning down of previously embarrassing costumes (Colin Baker’s in particular; hideously self-parodying question mark accoutrements etc.) into a battered black leather jacket is welcome, the low-cut v-neck t-shirt is a big mistake in my opinion: it just puts too much emphasis on Eccleston’s neck and doesn’t look right, especially when coupled with his ludicrously short crew cut – frankly he looks like a Navvy on a night out. Toning the Doctor’s clothes down was good, refusing to keep him in a ‘costume’ JNT-style was also good (as although each Doctor prior JNT had a look, they did frequently change clothes while retaining the look – Pertwee wore variously different coloured smoking jackets etc. – and this really detracted from the believability of the JNT Doctors). But a v-neck t-shirt!? That was quite simply slack and absurdly ‘casual’ of the costume designer – why not a jumper or a shirt?

For me the strongest element of ‘Rose’ was the internet character and his photographic revelations about the Doctor which could – and should – have been further developed throughout the series. Instead he is killed off by a Top Shop manikin masquerading as an Auton. The incidental music makes Keff McCullouch’s almost bearable by comparison. In true Doctor Who tradition – and in spite, this time, of sufficient money and technology to do it justice – the Nestene Consciousness was, for the third time in the series, insubstantially and unimpressively manifest! Other than the admittedly topical and polemical line from the Doctor about the Nestene liking the planet for its pollutants, no other explanation was given for the Auton’s third invasion. Whatever explanation might have been given was conveniently disguised in indecipherable alien gurgles which the Doctor chose not to translate for us (obviously he had yet to install the TARDIS’s new translating mechanism revealed in the next episode) and we were meant to piece together some sort of background story from his very worrying mention of ‘the war’ which he ‘fought in’. This climax was extremely disappointing and frankly unforgivable for a series famed for its tying up of loose ends in each story (bar one or two McCoy Sapphire and Steel-esque outings). In fact, ‘Rose’ has no story whatsoever and is largely like a 45 minute trailer. Where RTD does succeed is in the dialogue between Doctor and companion, which is, on the whole, pretty good. But characters cannot totally replace storyline. Even Unearthly Child managed to weave a story together, in the first ever episode alone!

Other criticisms: the inexcusable whimsy of the burping dustbin which would have inspired death threats in the JN-T days – this scene makes the sight of an old lady’s slipper peeping out from a Cleaner in Paradise Towers comparatively tame. Similarly pantomime-esque was the Doctor’s frantic struggle with the Auton arm while Rose blithely boiled the kettle in the foreground. His comment on a couple not lasting due to one being gay and one an alien while leafing through HEAT magazine was again needlessly contemporaneous and not even funny. Satire is good and welcome in the new series, polemic and political/social comment, but I hope cultural comment will not only be limited to the philistine popular sham whose protagonists try to convince themselves is ‘culture’, and which most people likely to watch Doctor Who desperately wish to switch off from. Isn’t that the point of escapism?

There seems to be a popular unanimity as to the near untouchable writing credentials of RTD. With exception to parts of the equally overly contemporaneous and highly camp Casanova, I can only ask, why? Not only was The Second Coming a very obvious sort of idea, it was, I felt, implausibly realised and actually very boring. Much as I was – and still am – an admirer of Eccleston’s outstanding acting talents (particularly in Jude and Our Friends in the North), I literally could not muster enough interest to finish watching the first episode of this 'acclaimed series', let alone tuning in for the second instalment. In my opinion, it was simply ordinary, when it could have been quite extraordinary given the theme. I have therefore, unlike most fans, been dreading the return of Doctor Who – as well as excitedly anticipating it on a purely superficial basis – and although I feel this Doctor has much potential, I am disappointed as to the weak writing of this first episode, the complete lack of any storyline (arguably for the first time ever in the show’s history) and a dramatically undermining attention to contemporary trendiness which is ultimately pervading and dogging RTD’s other TV output, Casanova. I feel RTD is imposing his own tastes too much and too early on, and that these tastes and stylistic trademarks of his are in essence geared towards two-dimensional, one-off viewing; a sort of gimmicky, ‘let’s not take things too seriously’ approach. Ring any bells from the past?

Another note is that I really think the new Who production team’s Stalinistic closed shop policy (i.e. not allowing any external scripts or ideas to be considered presently) will be the Achilees’ Heel of this reinvented programme: just look at the completely unimaginative episode titles for one – these writers need urgent help with their titles!!!

A few other moans: people keep talking of how unusual it is to have a feisty, independent-minded female assistant – so what was Ace then? The first non-RP Doctor – what about McCoy (and arguably even McGann with his slight Liverpudlian accent)? Later in the series: Daleks who fly! Does no one remember Remembrance? A new, bigger TARDIS set – the McGann one was bigger and far more interestingly designed (for what was admittedly an appalling film). A future story involving blue-faced zombies in dress of different periods emerging from smoke in the Second World War? Just a hint of Curse of Fenric there do you think?

But back to ‘Rose’ and my overall criticism: every single episode ever of Doctor Who before has been worthy of taping and re-watching at least three or four times over the years (even the clangers). I have decided on having watched Rose for a second time on video that it is not made for re-watching like the old stories: it simply doesn’t have enough meat to its threadbare script, there is nothing to get your teeth into or any subtexts to reinvestigate as in past stories (bar the internet man’s scene and the Doctor’s soliloquy about the Earth moving). Rose is still ultimately typical modern TV: superficial with pale flashes of depth here and there but not enough to warrant returning to after a second viewing. This is, sadly, the first Who story I can say this about, and I am not happy about that. I sincerely hope things improve and we finally get a story worthy of the canon.

Rose represents a very powerful beginning to the new Doctor Who series. There are lots of strong elements present, but I have also some misgivings, which I think, after viewing the second story, The End Of The World, are justified and will perhaps be entrenched within the series.

First, though, the good bits.

The pace of the story works incredibly well for what the serial set out to achieve. Essentially, this is a story introducing the Doctor and Rose, and giving the audience a taste of what the world of Doctor Who involves. In this it succeeds admirably, and so to quibble about a less than detailed subplot involving the Nestene invasion is really irrelevant. I’m actually quite surprised that some aspect of a story was told behind this introduction. It was clever of Russell T. Davies to involve the audience towards the end of the Nestene plot (and choosing a relatively straightforward invasion plan too), and we manage to get some semblance of a story with the impression that it has been going on for some time. For this story the pace worked brilliantly because of its aims, but I feel future episodes that are centred around story-telling rather than characters will suffer from the 43-or-so minute format.

The atmosphere built around the Nestene invasion and the mysteriousness of the Doctor was very effective. The initial sequence of Rose in department store’s basement is chilling; Clive’s elaboration on the Doctor slightly sinister and apocalyptic; and the denouement taking place in the Nestene base as well as the attack by Autons in the department store desperately exciting. That the Autons manage to pose a threat and gun down shoppers without a massive body count or gore being shown is a credit to the director.

The special effects are superb. Never has Doctor Who reached this height – and what a height! They’re so good, I’m not surprised the viewers that know Doctor Who of old don’t go dizzy for a bit wondering if this is still the same show. The Auton design is very realistic and their movements threatening, inhuman and still managing to convey the sense of being alive… yet not quite alive. The CGI rubbish bin has a great liquid quality and the Nestene Consciousness looks far better than the hairy tentacle monster from Spearhead From Space.

The inside of the TARDIS is magnificent in its scale. It has a creepy dark green glow that is perhaps more suited to the Master than the Doctor, and one has to wonder how he can see anything in there! I think the general design of the TARDIS is spot on, but its atmosphere has to be lightened somewhat – the Doctor isn’t a creepy alien who likes to skulk about in the dark and brood. At least, I hope not! The TARDIS, I believe, should have a homely feel, which is well lit and inviting. When Ace calls the TARDIS "home" in Survival, she isn't talking about anything that looks or feels like the new TARDIS design. The telemovie TARDIS, while less alien with the wood panelling and very Welsian, carries a more accurate spirit of what the interior should be like, even if the current design is better.

As for the characters, Rose shines as inspired, both actress and character meld beautifully together and she is really the star of the show. I shan’t go on about how good Billie Piper is as Rose – everyone else is saying that already, and rightly so! Hopefully she will continue as such a strong character throughout the series, and I’m glad she’s coming back for the second series.

Rose’s mother is wonderfully stereotypical and has some great lines about compensation and “skin like an old Bible”. Mickey is fairly lame and hopefully a character we don’t get to see again. Clive is well used for what he is there for. I must say his demise was rather touching, not emotionally, but in the sense that it gave a real presence of threat to the Autons.

Now to the Doctor. I both like and dislike him. This is appropriate for the character of the alien Time Lord, who is not one of us and should not always be seen as someone we can approve of continually, being far more complex than Superman. But unfortunately I think I dislike him for the wrong reasons. There are times when you can’t help but dislike or even loathe Hartnell’s, Colin Baker’s or even McCoy’s Doctor, but usually this is because of your human response to their seemingly inhuman actions: they act selfishly, or see the bigger picture and not the individual, or are dubious in their intentions, making them seem slightly evil. As an alien not part of the human species and foreign to human culture, this is all well and good. Yet this is not why I dislike Eccleston’s Doctor so much. I actually thought the scenes where he apparently forgot or disregarded Mickey because he was focused on the bigger picture were great. His alien aloofness too is depicted well. 

What I’m not liking about Doctor number nine – and from the look of the second story, what we are going to be stuck with – is that he seems to be a manic buffoon who wears broad, inane grins for no apparent reason and both makes and laughs at the lamest of jokes. Most of the attempts at comedy by Eccleston and Davies are misplaced: the slapstick with the Auton arm, the truly appalling “armless” joke (couldn’t they have come up with something both original and witty, like Tom Baker’s, “What a wonderful butler, he’s so violent!”?), the price war joke, etc. There are times when the silliness works: the mucking about with the cards, the Doctor’s child-like zeal at the prospect of danger when he pulls off Auton Mickey’s head, the “fantastic” line, etc. But there are other times when one has to wonder what the director or actor were thinking. It’s okay for the Doctor to crack jokes, laugh and be silly (and silly looking) but these actions should fit a relevant context (such as putting off an enemy) not just be put in here or there to make him look alien. Ultimately it makes him look laughable and ridiculous. (One reviewer rightly pointed out that one problem with Eccleston's approach is his attempting to show all the lust for life the Doctor has but doing so by shoving it down your throat even second.)

This Doctor’s total disgust with humanity is also very strange (he disparages humans three or four times in the episode). This may be only a trait he retains for this first episode, just to show that he isn’t “one of us”. Let’s hope so. I don’t mind a Doctor who occasionally puts humans in their place, but to constantly denigrate the species, well… one wonders why some with that attitude even bothers to help anyone. His thanks to Rose at the end of the story seems to suggest that his dislike for humanity is only temporary. (Indeed in The End Of The World, the Doctor only makes one jibe against human beings.)

I don’t have any problems with the Doctor’s northern accent. The colloquialisms and slang are fine, but a bit overused (too much “ya” instead of “yes”, etc.) and instead of being a medium through which the richness and beauty of the English language is explored (something a great writer like Robert Holmes handled only too well), Doctor Who now seems to be on the same level of pedestrian and unartistic dialogue that most shows on telly inhabit today. The sign of a lazy writer, Mr Davies. Perhaps most people won’t have a problem with this point; it’s probably the English teacher in me that is annoyed by it. Yet there is another issue that is more of a problem. The Doctor now has a northern accent because the actor playing him is from Manchester. Fine. But highlighting this difference in the story was a huge mistake. Invariably what the Doctor sounds like, as well as what he looks like, is going to be different all the time because of the different actors playing the role. There should be little differentiation, however, between the character based on the attributes of the actor. When you write the role of the Doctor you write it based on the character of the Doctor, not if the actor has a northern accent, is short, has gingivitis, etc. No character ever asked the Seventh Doctor why he sounded slightly Scots. In the telemovie the mistake was made:

Grace [trying to excuse the Doctor’s eccentric behaviour to the policeman]: “He’s British.”

Doctor: “Yes, I suppose I am.”

What crap. He only sounds British because he is being played by a British actor and for an American audience, which should be irrelevant. That is the universality of Doctor Who, that anyone can play the character. Similarly, if the Doctor regenerates into a woman, the fact shouldn’t be emphasised. That the new series made the same mistake when Rose asked the Doctor why he sounded like he came from the north suggests they haven’t really got a grip on things. Either that, or it was another attempt to score a cheap, lame joke. At least the “lots of planets have a north” was funny. (I’m getting the impression that this Doctor Who series is going to delight in cheap jokes – as Rose tells the Doctor in the second story when he says something - I think it was a joke! - about the “Deep South”.)

In fact, Russell T. Davies seems to introduce a lot of lewd or sexual dialogue into his stories. Rose has more than it’s fair share: Mickey’s “any excuse to get you into the bedroom”, Rose’s mother trying to pick up the Doctor, the Doctor’s “his gay and she’s an alien”, the mention of breast implants, etc. While the world we live in is obviously sex obsessed to the point of ludicrousness, the world of Doctor Who should be relatively free from such tripe. I call it tripe because it is used cheaply, as either a poor joke or an attempt to seem “contemporary” and “relevant”. Some sexual jokes can work really well but only if they are in character and not forced. Thinking ahead to The End Of The World, it seems this trend continues however.

Regardless of these criticisms, Eccleston’s approach to the Doctor is fresh and full of energy. His intensity and sudden changes of expression from hardness to softness (for example, during the wonderful “world revolving” speech) add a lot to the character. The way the Doctor is introduced is perfect and the mystery as to his identity is kept up throughout the story. The Ninth Doctor’s ability for quick thinking is superb and while this might leave the audience in the dark for some time – since he doesn’t seem to explain anything he does, for example, what the sonic screwdriver is (which he uses way too much for my liking) – it adds tremendously to the intelligence of the character. It’s a real shame that Eccleston won’t be around for much longer as the Doctor because his character has real potential to be one of the best.

Apart from some misgivings to do with the Doctor’s character, dialogue and length of the episode, Rose begins the new series in style. It is atmospheric, exciting and effective in its intentions. Welcome back Doctor Who! 7.5/10

And so we begin again.

"I'm the doctor. Now run for your life!"

It has been 16 years since the good doctor had a fresh broadcast fr the a person to sit down and enjoy. Certainly I was of those too young to enjoy such a thing and consequently left me on VHS and DVD to explore the past of this wonderful TV show.Thus 'my' doctor was Pat Troughton-the one I loved most.

Enough about the past though-this generation now as a doctor of thier own: Christopher Ecclestone (although this generaions doctor may be the next one). Since September 2003 we have been following the progress of the awaited return, debating the good points (the actors, writers and cast) and the bad (the logo, the jacket, the romance suggestions). Now we get to see the final results.

As was at the beginning, we are introduced with a startling and wonderful title theme. No time is wasted as we are introduced to Rose Tyler, played to perfection by Billie Piper. A hectically paced first few minutes shows us the life she leads: an average one and therefore something to connect us with her thoughts and feelings. 

In only a few minutes we are shown the principle threat of the episode: the plastic autons. If you didn't know, the autons have been in the show before. Did you need to know? No, and thats one of the reasons their use here is so good. The threat of something we see so often also acts in a way as another monster wouldn't have. 

The introduction of the doctor is well handled. The dialogue between him and Rose is emotional and comical, and continues well throughut the episode. The only prblem is the way Chris sometimes garble his lines, resulting in many watchings of certain scenes. The effects are top form for this episode and probably the best produced in an english drama. 

The guest characters here are a very odd bunch for an average setting. Mickey is a little too comical to be taken seriously when he needs to be (although the wheely bin sequence and the plastic replica smashing upth restruant are priceless). Roses mother is a curious but slightly discardable character. The best of all is Clive. His way of revealing the doctor to us is chilling, and his fate is one we care about. 

Roses first view of the TARDIS is a new way of introducing it and a very well worked one; in fact its one of the highlights of the episode. The climax of the episode is curiously effective, although the suggestionof a war we never saw is probably adding the continuity on early (although if we consider The Celestial Toymaker, maybe not). The final freeze frame sets out for the rest of the season.

So, he's back. Did it live up to what we want? Yes, it is certainly what we wanted and sets a promising start for what we hope to be many more years of time travelling.

When the announcement came through that a new series of "Doctor Who" was going into production, ready for a 2005 transmission, I have to admit, my first response was: "oh, no!" Not, I must add, because I was afraid it would be rubbish, but because 2005 was scheduled to be my year abroad from university. I was to spend the first half of the year in Germany, and wouldn't be able to see it! Typical - I became a fan in 1996 (yes, the movie did convert some of us) and they have had almost a decade to bring it back; when they do, I have to miss it!

Still, thanks to the delights of a friend's DVD recorder (she was home for episodes 1 and 2 only) and BBC DVD's quick work, I have now had the pleasure of episodes 1, 2 and 3. I've read all sorts of reviews, and really, some fans will moan about anything, won't they?

"Rose" is, as far as I am concerned, the perfect way to bring the show back. We meet the Doctor through the eyes of Rose, played so very well by Billie Piper. I remember being impressed with her in "Canterbury Tales" but here she is something else. 

I showed this episode to a non-fan friend who sat through it, all the while gasping in surprise at how "cool" it was. "Doctor Who" is cool. Believe it. 

So, why do I love Rose so much? Well, firstly, there's the Doctor. Wild, manic and very very funny, this is the Doctor as he should be, showing up, saving the world and leaving again. Eccleston nails it from his first word - "Run!" and is the star of every scene he is in. Somehow, despite his everyman look, everything about him feels right - I believe in this Doctor, I want to spend time with him, to get to know him. His "I can feel it" speech adds much more mystery to the character than any of the Cartmel stories ever did.

Next up, Rose herself. She balances initial disbelief with a growing realisation of what she is encountering so well, and her first scene in the TARDIS is brilliant. 

Thirdly, the TARDIS. Just what I'd hoped for, the designers haven't simply ignored either the original design or the TV Movie version, and have come up with a cracking set.

Fourth - the Autons are back. Though not named, we know who they are. The plot is a little non existent, but it's fast, it's fun, it's an adventure and it's "Doctor Who", people. rejoice.

There are many magic moments in "Rose". The first time you see the Doctor. The lovely scene where he looks in the mirror. Clive's menacing summary of our hero. The beautiful, haunting scene where the Doctor tells Rose who he is, and the arguably even better bit just afterwards where he walks back to THAT BOX and you hear THAT SOUND over a haunting score as Rose runs back to see the dematerialisation. Rose's first trip in the TARDIS. The Doctor pleading for humanity, suddenly very serious and very scary - "I am talking!" The Doctor and Rose leaving together at the end.

Oh, it has faults, but you know what, I don't care. "Rose" marks the welcome return of a hero who should never have been away for so long. Christopher Eccleston is Doctor Who. Believe it. Watch it. Love it.