It feels like such a long time since we first met David Tennant’s tenth Doctor properly in “The Christmas Invasion,” and even then we were only really given fifteen minutes or so to see what he could do. I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with him and “New Earth” gives him the opportunity to play the Doctor on so many different levels. For example, we see him calmly and softly talking to the dying Face of Boe; we see his ready wit and charm as he bangs on about the hospital not having a shop and warns Rose to watch out for the disinfectant; we hear his utterly flat and emotionless voice as he discovers the Sisters’ sentient lab rats and most importantly of all, we see the anger burning his eyes as he threatens the Novice.

“I’m the Doctor and if you don’t like it… if you want to take it to a higher authority there isn’t one! It stops with me!”

“New Earth” begins with a short pre-credit sequence just to re-enforce to viewers all that Rose is leaving behind at home, and it doesn’t seem like any time at all before the Doctor and Rose are laid on a hillside in the galaxy M87 in the year 5,000,000,000,023 talking about how much they love travelling with each other and how they had chips on their first date at the end of the world! Brilliant! Outside the mind of Douglas Adams, where else could you have a scene like that? Russell T. Davies need only use a few carefully selected words to sum up just who the Doctor and Rose are and just exactly what they do. A 5-year old kid who has never seen or heard of Doctor Who (and I’m very happy to say that’s not likely these days!) could tune into this episode and ‘get it’ within just a couple of scenes. In the same vein, casual viewers (let’s face it… there must be a regular audience of about 7 million of ‘em) could just flick over to BBC1 and be back into these characters within the blink of an eye. Superb writing.

This episode also reminded me just how incredibly fast the show is nowadays. The pace is absolutely frenetic; Chip, “The End of the World” spiders, Cassandra and the Sisters of Plenitude are all established within five minutes of the episode’s start! Were this the classic series, it would be the remit of the first two or even three episodes just to introduce these characters and we would have to dutifully while away hours of our lives watching the Sisters shiftily skulk about until the Doctor finally uncovers their evil machinations. Cassandra, for example, wouldn’t even be revealed until (at the earliest!) the Part 1 cliffhanger. I couldn’t believe some of the early reviews that were posted on Outpost Gallifrey that said the episode was too fast. I mean, how can it be? If it makes sense (which it does) and it’s entertaining (which it undoubtedly is) then where is the problem? It took Russell T. Davies just two lines of dialogue to set up the shady goings on in the hospital – one from Cassandra to Rose, and the aside between the two Sisters about one of the patients being conscious! Personally, I’d rather sit and be thoroughly entertained for forty-five minutes than to merely be mildly entertained for over a hundred.

I was also pleased that Davies had opted to finally send the Doctor and Rose right out there into the universe; to a new planet in another galaxy. I had very few complaints about the first series, but the one thing I would have liked to have seen was an alien world. Well, this time around it happens in the very first episode, and it’s absolutely beautiful. New Earth successfully combines the essential elements that make our Earth what it is (for Earth, read Britain) – green grass, rocky shores, blue sky – but it also has just that hint of the fantastic; those huge moons and planets in the skyline, the futuristic city of New, New York. Moreover, we weren’t show it for long – it wasn’t necessary. A few quick snapshots of the vista were all that was needed to establish the episode’s setting; for the most part it was a very traditional studio-based corridor romp.

From the start “New Earth” set itself up to be a sequel to “The End of the World”, and although it reused so many characters and elements from that story (even the incidental music) the episode was different enough to be fresh and entertaining. Aside from the new Doctor (which in itself makes the whole thing a brand new ball game), Davies used Cassandra very differently. The whole ‘body swap’ notion is one that is constantly done to death in science fiction, and why? Because it works! It creates tension, humour and it’s a brilliant storytelling device. It’s also, I cynically noted, a way to do Cassandra on the cheap! Billie Piper really excelled herself in this episode. When Cassandra took over her body, I had to really listen to make sure that Zoe Wanamaker hadn’t overdubbed the lines as it sounded so much like her.

“New Earth” is definitely one of Davies’ funniest scripts, and whilst it might not have anything like the dramatic weight of “The Parting of the Ways” or “The Christmas Invasion,” it’s incredibly entertaining… and filthy! Rose’s scene with Chip and Cassandra has to hold the series record for the most double entendres ever; it had me in stitches! I also really like the little details in there, for example, how Rose picks up a pipe as soon as she realises that she’s not where she’s meant to be. She’s learning. So is Davies – I bet there isn’t a ‘Dad’ in the country who wasn’t grateful for his “Curves! It’s like living inside a bouncy castle… nice rear bumper!” scene. Move aside Peri, we have a new champion… well, nearly! I don’t think any story will ever manage to top “Planet of Fire”…

It’s also very effective how the writer kills two birds with one stone as it were. Once again, very economically with just one line he establishes that Rose is still alive inside Cassandra and that as Cassandra has access to Rose’s recent memories, she knows who the Doctor is. There’s even a laugh to boot with the “he’s changed his face! The hypocrite!” gag – not many writers could do all that with such few words.

And then, of course, we come to the kiss, and just like all the Captain Jack stuff in “The Parting of the Ways,” it’s a load of fuss about nought. It’s not even Rose who kisses the Doctor; it’s Cassandra! She been living as a piece of skin for who knows how long, so it’s no real surprise that she’s a bit frustrated! Moreover, it felt very natural and in keeping with the light-hearted nature of the episode, and even gave David Tennant a chance to further demonstrate his versatility as an actor. It’s evident that the tenth Doctor has a ready wit and is generally very funny in a “I’m cool” sort of way, but the kiss gave Tennant a chance to be funny in more of a slapstick manner with his incredibly high-pitched “Yep… still got it”, the straightening of the tie and the puzzled (but not appalled, I noticed – he loved it!) look he had on his face. Being the Doctor though, he’s back on the ball almost instantly and he knows that this isn’t Rose. Her lack of interest in the lab-rat patients that they discover is the final nail in the coffin.

Most of Davies’ Doctor Who stories seem to have some sort of statement to make, never more noticeably than in “The Christmas Invasion” with all the Harriett Jones / Belgrano stuff. In “New Earth,” he uses the hot topics of cloning and medical experimentation to form the basis of his story. Such issues are wonderful fodder for Doctor Who because the Doctor is such a profound, unwavering moral force. In this episode, for example, one the one side of the fence sit the Sisters of Plenitude, who would argue that their experiments are for the greater good, and on the other side of the fence sits the Doctor, who basically says “bollocks, it’s not reet!” And then, just for fun, we have Cassandra in the middle who just wants to live forever and make a fat pile of cash into the bargain! With such interesting issues explored, Davies is in a way going right back to the show’s fundamental tenets of educating as well as entertaining, albeit a bit cynically. The year 5 billion and it’s the 21st century all over again!

I only have one real gripe with “New Earth,” there is just one scene towards the middle of the episode that I thought was a bit weak. Cassandra has knocked the Doctor out with her perfume, and has him locked up, ready to give him every disease in the book as revenge for ‘murdering’ her in “The End of the World.” I didn’t like the way how the Doctor didn’t escape, he just sort of got swept up in events as Cassandra is forced by the Sisters to go to “Plan B” – it was a bit too fifth Doctor for my liking. Especially in an early episode, I felt the Doctor needed more to do to win the audience over, as it were. Instead, he gets to mince about with Cassandra in his head – “ooh baby! I’m beating out a Samba!” – saying things that I found amusing but are really gonna wind some fans up – “so many parts… and hardly used!” – although in his defence, when he’s in control of his own body he’s tough. He steadfastly refuses to help Cassandra escape – “Give her back to me!” - in the end forcing her into the body of one of the lab-rat people, setting up the story’s conclusion.

“I’m the Doctor and I cured them… pass it on!”

After a lot of running about in corridors being chased (Doctor Who heaven!) the Doctor and Rose / Cassandra reach the relative safety of the top floor of the hospital. The Doctor’s solution to the situation is very much in the style of the “anti-plastic” get-out in “Rose”, here the Doctor quickly cooking up a cocktail of different intravenous cures and showering the lab-rats with it using the ‘disinfectant shower’ introduced at the start of the episode. This got absolutely torn to shreds in the initial batch of reviews on Outpost Gallifrey; much to my amusement someone even called it “weak science.” They are watching a TV show about a man from outer space with two hearts and thirteen lives who travels around the universe in a phone box fighting monsters (who for the most part are suspiciously humanoid) and they nit-pick about him administering a cure which is meant to be delivered intravenously as a shower! I mean, come on! It’s magic, innit? He’s the Doctor. He’s nearly a thousand years old. A bit of medical jiggery-pokery is nought to him; he’s a Time Lord! For all we know it could have been the saliva that he secreted when he opened the bags of cures with his mouth that cured these people!

If Russell T. Davies and co. listen to such trivial complaints (though I’m sure they’re to sensible to) Doctor Who will end up going the way it did in 1989. It’s like I said earlier; I’d much rather watch 30 seconds of the genius Doctor create an almost magical cure from whatever he has to hand than watch some scientist quietly shuffle about in a lab for ages tediously coming up with a cure the boring sciencey way! This is Saturday night prime time!

The resolution of Cassandra’s story gave the episode quite a touching ending. Having taken over the willing but dying body of Chip, her loyal ‘half-life’ clone, Cassandra is finally prepared to die. Her experience in the body of one of the lab-rats, privy to their intense suffering, had somehow changed her, and so the Doctor allowed her the privilege of visiting herself in the past (at the last moment she can ever remember being happy) and dying in her own arms, a very sombre ending to a very upbeat and amusing episode. Oh, for those of you that want to nit-pick – where are the Reapers, hm? It’s lucky that moment didn’t happen to be a “weak point in time”…

On a side note, I found the Face of Boe scenes very interesting. Just as it was in the first series, the first hint of the show’s mythology in series two is incredibly well done, the Novice’s dialogue is almost poetic. “… he will speak these words only to one like himself. It is said he’ll talk to a wanderer… to the man without a home. The lonely God.” It was also quite an event in itself to have the Face of Boe speak; I think that they got his ‘voice’ just right – very soft, very wise… nothing too over the top. What this big ‘secret’ is exactly is something which I’m sure will be widely speculated about until he meets the Doctor for the “third and last” time. I loved the Doctor’s childish reaction to being told that it will have to wait – “Oh! Does it have to!” Fantastic stuff.

Here’s my theory on it, if anyone is interested. “… the man without a home. The lonely God” made me think about how the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, and as the penultimate episode is entitled “Army of Ghosts”, maybe some of them survived the Time War, for some reason the secret of their survival known only to the Face of Boe. I’m sure that when this ‘secret’ is revealed in the next 12 weeks (or perhaps even next year) I’ll look like a complete idiot, but still…

In all, David Tennant’s Doctor had without question the best opening story of all the Doctors with “The Christmas Invasion,” and so “New Earth” inevitably suffers from that ‘difficult second album’ syndrome. It’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s that people wouldn’t give it chance to be. It’s light and it’s fun, it happens fast and it’s over quick. Tennant and Piper are both phenomenal, and Russell T. Davies’ writing is right up there with them. For me, he could single-handedly run Doctor Who forever… unless he regenerates the Doctor into a woman. Then he’s dead.

Seriously though, “New Earth” has been the best thing on TV since “The Christmas Invasion” and I don’t see any reason why this series shouldn’t be every bit as good as the last, if not better. Remember the slating “Rose” got and look how well things turned out there...

After the two-part plot-hole riddled exercise in pompous self-indulgence that comprised the finale of season one of the new series of Doctor Who, my faith in Russell T. Davies’ scripts was, to say the least, somewhat lacking. Having rather enjoyed ‘The Christmas Invasion’, I was feeling more optimistic about the Davies-penned season two opener ‘New Earth’, but was still rather cautious; fortunately, despite some criticisms, I found myself largely relieved.

‘New Earth’ sees Russell T. Davies juggling his new Doctor, Rose, an old enemy, an old acquaintance, Cat Nuns, zombies, and two distinct subplots, as well the series’ first on-screen alien planet, within the constricting time frame of a single forty-five minute episode, and for the most part he pulls it off. To start with the last of these first, the planet in question is New Earth, and whilst it’s closely based on the old one and is, blatantly, the Welsh coastline with some CGI added, the simple fact that the Doctor takes Rose out of Earth’s space and indeed to a different galaxy automatically broadens the scope of the series in a way that feels rather refreshing. It helps that ‘New Earth’ looks rather good; the CGI is obviously CGI, but it’s easy on the eye, and the hospital exterior meshes convincingly with the studio and location work used for the interior. As for the occupants of the hospital, the Sisters of Plenitude are a far cry from the Puss-in-Boots misfortune of the Cheetah People and look great, and as Davies manages to admirably restrain himself from making cheap pussy jokes, then I shall do the same. The Face of Boe looks just as striking as it did in ‘The End of the World’ and having apparently decided to reuse the character because the creative juices started flowing whilst he was writing its profile for the Monsters and Villains book, Davies puts it to good use here. The secret that the Face of Boe will reveal to the Doctor just before it dies is suitably intriguing, although so too were the various Bad Wolf references in season one, and that turned out to be narrative- and dramatic excrement.

‘New Earth’ tangles the Doctor and Rose up in two subplots, both of which are moderately, but not wholly successful. The first of these is the secret of the Sisterhood, who it turns out have managed to discover cures for every known disease by creating large numbers of supposedly mindless human clones on which to perform laboratory tests for their various drugs and therapies. If this sounds like a thinly veiled and ham-fisted attack on the controversial topic of animal experimentation with a few pot shots at cloning technology thrown in without a great deal of thought, this is because it is. I wouldn’t mind, but Davies has nothing intelligent to say about the subject, either for or against; there is a general message that animal testing is a bad thing, but the reasons given by the Doctor, who is thrust into the position of moral mouthpiece, tend to revolve around the more specific message that if you are going to use cloned humans as test animals, it is best to ensure that don’t develop sentience and go on rampages. The rampage in question results in a blatant homage to the works of George A. Romero, which works reasonably well, as plague-ridden zombies lurch around the hospital slowly infecting and killing everyone they come into contact with. Director James Hawes does a good job of depicting the claustrophobic horror of these scenes; the pustule-covered zombies look as effective as they could do within the limitations of the episode’s time slot, and they have a certain remorselessness of purpose common to the genre. The problems with this subplot, which are admittedly fairly easy to live with, lie with the plot; the Doctor’s solution to the problem is to mix all of the Sisterhood’s cures together, reasoning that if the clones have been used to develop cures for every possibly disease, then combining the cures will free the clones from their curse. This does rather raise the question of why the Sisters have already realised this before him, and why they even bother with separate cures; the Doctor only has a dozen or so bags of coloured water around his neck when he slides down the lift shaft to confront the horde, so each must already contain a potent cocktail effective on several diseases (think carefully about the ramifications of the phrase “every disease”). It might help too if Davies was prepared to add a dose of realism by mentioning some genuine disease, but instead we get pulp science fiction rot such as petrifold regression. Given that the Sisters have measures in place to quarantine the hospital, one might also ask why they haven’t developed fail safes to stop all of the cells opening at once and rather easily, since all it takes is Chip to pull a lever, and for one of the handful of clones thus released to jam his arm into a junction box.

Mention of Chip brings me to the second subplot, which sees the return of Cassandra, last seen in ‘The End of the World’. The incessantly bitchy last human works quite well, although this is as much to do with Zoe Wanamaker’s performance as it is to the script, and her decision to transplant her mind into Rose’s body results in some of the funniest lines in the episode, including, “Oh my god, I’m a chav!” The kiss is also highly amusing, especially the Doctor’s speechless response to it, but the best aspect of this subplot is that it gives Billie Piper a chance to show off her acting skills, which turn out to be even better than I had expected; she manages to sound like Zoe Wanamaker and act like Cassandra with remarkable ease, and far more so in fact than David Tennant does. Although Tennant gets the worst lines, including “I’m beating out a samba!” and his brief verbal drag act comes perilously close to crossing the line between funny and irritating. The whole subplot falls apart at the end, firstly as Cassandra enters the body of one of the clones, and immediately shrieks, “I look disgusting!” Mere seconds later however, she’s emotionally telling the Doctor, “All their lives they’ve never been touched”, a small shift in character which might have been more convincing if this had been her first reaction. She is, admittedly, monumentally, shallow but this only makes the episode’s ending feel more forced, as she switches from callous mass murderer, extortionist and black mailer to tragic figure accepting, rather rapidly, that it is time for her to die. Personally, I’d have been more convinced if she’d abandoned Chip and leapt into the body of one the nuns. The ending, as the Doctor and Rose take her back in time to tell herself that she is beautiful, is nauseatingly sentimental. It says a great deal for the Doctor’s character that he’s willing to do favours for someone who has just tried to steal his companion’s body, but it is a bit hard to swallow. I also find myself wondering why Cassandra blames Rose, “that dirty blonde assassin”, for her apparent death in ‘The End of the World’, when it was clearly the Doctor’s doing. You’d think the man who wrote both that episode and this would know what he was doing, wouldn’t you?

But in terms of the lead character, ‘New Earth’ works very well as a season opener. Tennant, and the Doctor, is markedly less manic than in ‘The Christmas Invasion’, and having settled into the role does a fine job of it. He shifts effortlessly between comedy, whimsy, and drama, and conveys the Doctor’s anger when required with ease. As in ‘The Christmas Invasion’, he immediately feels like the Doctor in a way that Christopher Eccleston often didn’t quite manage and for the second episode in a row, Davies allows the character to be proactive and save the day through a combination of ingenuity and bravery rather than leaving it to Rose. He gets one or two dodgy lines, Davies still demonstrating a tendency to let the Doctor self-mythologize, such as when he announces that there is no higher authority, and when he rather awkwardly tells the Mayor of New New York’s bespectacled harridan, “So I’ll have to stop you lot as well then. Suits me”, but for the most part the character works brilliantly. Tennant also conveys a great deal through facial acting, especially when he confirms that Rose isn’t in her right mind by asking, “What if the sub-frame’s blocked?”

I have other criticisms of ‘New Earth’. Rose seems fine whenever Cassandra leaves her body, which is fortunate considering that one at least one occasion she’s very high up a ladder, but when Cassandra leaves her for Chip, she conveniently faints into the Doctor’s arms, which is remarkably contrived. The fey and obsequious Chip, who might as well be wearing a gimp suit, is astoundingly irritating. The most annoying aspect of the episode however is Murray Gold’s abominable incidental score which veers from pompous melodrama to forced wackiness to cloying sentiment with all the subtlety of, well, Keff McCulloch. Despite these criticisms however, and it may seem that I’m being rather harsh, ‘New Earth’ succeeds in being entertaining, engaging, and thus a suitable season opener. I suspect however, that as with Season One, the first episode will not be typical, and that the best is yet to come.

If the last series began by riffing on early Jon Pertwee then this one began by mainlining the Douglas Adams era. Idiosyncratic english space opera at it's unashamed best. I also detected some of Warren Ellis's deadpan 'so-preposterous-it-must-be-true' sci fi gigantisms (to wit-"what kinds of disease? "All of them"). It's great to see that this show- which only a few short years ago was little better than a dusty antiques fair populated by curious, ageing fans- has been reborn so wonderfully.

First off- Bille Piper. Bi-liee Piper. Dang! Ding-a-Dang! One almost despairs at how good she is, because it means that surely she's destined for bigger (would it be offensive to say greater?) things, and soon. Horny teenagers throughout the nation will doubtless have fumbled frantically for the record button during the scene where Cassandra inhabits Rose's body and starts examining her new figure. Those of us older but with the mind of a horny teenager and a little patience will wait sweaty handed for the dvd. Ripping my mind from the gutter and fixing my sights firmly on Ms Piper's art- ART I said! She was the best thing about the last series and she's the best thing here, plain and simple. It's high camp all the way when the evil Cassandra posesses the Doctor's body, utterly convincing character acting from line to line when she takes Rose for a joy ride. Which is not to slight David Tennant in any way, shape, form or thought- if Christopher Eccleston was this generation's Jon Pertwee, Tennant may well be the new Tom Baker. The wide eyes full of intergalactic boggle, the grand canyon grin adding Tardis-like dimensions to Tennant's elfin face. All Bakerisms to a man. An effortless comedian one moment and mysterious, star weary eternal the next. I'm very excited.

Secondly (secondly? Thirdly, surely), the effects. Shallow I know, but...is it now boring to say that mainstream sci fi on the telly has to compete with the likes of (repeat after me in Dalek tones) Buffyangelstargatestartrek? Well yes, but the first bite is with the eye so to speak, and what a banquet New Earth was. You could practically SMELL the apple grass! New New York was Coruscant from the Star Wars designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Jack Kirby. Alien races have taken a few leaps forward since the last series (I was never keen on the porridgey Slitheen) and the Cat Nuns are creepy patrons of a stark, futurist hospital. Brilliantly though, the imagery is rightly second fiddle to the characters and the plot. There return of old face Cassandra and big face the Face of Boa signal that the new Who is creating it's own mythos whilst honouring the old, which is more than I could have ever wished for. A shame Cassandra had to be killed off though- imagine her teaming up with Sil, or even the Master! Fans, start your fanwanking. A fine set up for the future series which, if it mirrors the last one, will get better and better with each episode. The trailer for round two has me salivating- Werewolves! Warrior Monks! With Queen Victoria! In Scotland!

Vworp Vworp!

So Doctor Who is back, after months of waiting with baited breath, countless news reports and a build up that not-surprisingly outshone the new Wembley Stadium, the very first episode of Doctor Who Series 2, graced our screens.

Unhampered by the dulcet tones of Graham Norton the episode got off to an interesting start, with Rose saying another goodbye to Jackie and Mickey. The arrival on New Earth is to be honest a bit rushed, infact that plagues the episode throughout and really brings back some of the rather upsetting faults of 'Rose' form the previous season.

The only real thing that really made me cringe in this episode was the stomach-churning relationship between the Doctor and Rose. It just seemed to tacky and with a bit of luck won't develop much further. Fair enough character development is essential to television programmes these days it seems but one can't help but feel the Doctor-Rose 'love' relationship is undermining the programme and the main action. By all means let them travel the universe and have a laugh but all this mushy luvvy duvvy nonsense is...well...nonsense.

Despite this the rest of the episode is enjoyable. The Cat Nurse seemed a little spare to the plot at times, but it was wonderful to see Cassandra back, especially in human form. Chip is an interesting addition to proceedings and the mutants at the end of the episode might seem a bit cliche but are harmless enough (if you get my drift).

The drama could have done with a bit more time to develop but other than that it was an enjoyable romp, which started off the new series well. David Tennant seems to be finding his feet well and holds the episode up nicely. Billie Piper delivers a hilarious performance as the Cassandra-possessed Rose (and David Tennant's attempt is none too bad either)

The ending is a nice wind down moment and Zoe Wanamaker is wonderful in the final few scenes. The pathos is played well and David Tennant's last look at the unfolding scene is a good way to finish. The trailer for next week looks to be a good return to the more sinister and spooky side of Doctor Who, and with this episode a pretty much firm starting block (perhaps the humour could have been played down a little) the new series looks to be just as good as the first.

"Fantastic?" - Not quite - As the first episode of the second series of Doctor Who premiered on UK terrestial television to an audience of 8.2 million viewers, it failed to deliver a story befitting the return of a much loved character. However, "New Earth" had its moments and there is no denying the chemistry between Tennant and Piper that exudes on screen. Tennant has yet to convince me he is in the same class as Eccleston, although he did a fairly decent job given the fact he appeared to have a script written in the mould of Eccleston's Doctor, despite RTD efforts to tidy up Tennants transition.

On the plus side the special effects were great - star warseque in standard for our first alien world adventure, and the new breed of diseased riddled humans would have have sent the kids running behind their sofas. The Face of Bo was a welcome return, now shrouded in even more mystery to be revealed in a later episode. Zoe Wannamaker was excellent as Lady Cassandra - shame about Tennant's and Piper's possession scenes - you either love it or hate it, and I hated it because it was a weak plot twist that detracted from the more sinister going ons with our feline Sisters of Mercy. RTD uses the characters of Cassandra and the Face of Bo to complete Tennants Transition as the 10th Doctor, but it just back-fires as you remember how great Eccleston's Doctor was.

It is early days for Tennant and glimpses of future episodes show real promise. I just hope RTD allows Tenants Doctor to reveal his own distinct querks that will enable us to love him in the same unique way we love his previous incarnations. - "Any one for a jelly baby?"

Oh dear. As with other RTD stories, arenВ’t you just left with the feeling that it could have been so much better? There are tonnes of great ideas in this episode, and the hospital the setting is extremely well realised. But 45 minutes just isnВ’t enough time in which to develop them. In fact, itВ’s worse than not having enough time. The series feels constrained by the rhythm of the 45-minute format. You can almost predict how the pace of the show will change at any given moment. Star Trek TNG had the same problem, with the dramatic ebbs and flows timed around the commercial breaks. At 25 minutes gone, with most of the ideas introduced, I found myself looking at the clock and waiting for each of them to be wrapped up in the time remaining. This argues against making any emotional or intellectual investment in the story. The old four-episode structure allowed for a more thoughtful development of the ideas less predictability.

On the plus side, I was favourably impressed with Tennant. The Christmas Invasion left me very cold, but in this story we were shown the new DoctorВ’s serious side. He still canВ’t quite do angry (like McCoy), but heВ’s definitely got the hang of thoughtful. Those glasses probably helped. He lacks EcclestoneВ’s insecurity and accompanying arrogance, which is great. Hopefully, he will also lack the 9th DoctorВ’s questionable moral judgement.

RTDВ’s mixture of smutty, ironic humour isnВ’t to everyoneВ’s taste, but he does bring it off very cleanly. I think it would certainly be a problem if he continues to dominate the series as he did last year. Doctor Who doesnВ’t belong to anyone В– not even him. Its strength is in the flexibility of the format, which allows new writers and directors to come in and do their own thing in their own way. RTDВ’s obsession with referring to the mythology of his own episodes is a means of maintaining some continuity and familiarity from one week to the next (in the absence of multiple-episode stories), but he must be very careful not to undermine the very thing that makes Doctor Who so successful В– and durable. Likewise, the smut and irony is used to gloss over the fact that the story is too short to sustain all those wonderful ideas В– so it all comes back to format in the end.

Next weekВ’s episode looks good, but letВ’s go further back in time! Think of the epic quality of Marco Polo: the historical setting, the time spent on the journey to Peking, the distance covered, the range of different setting, the changes of pace. Doctor Who in 2006 simply cannot so this anymore, and the series is the poorer for it.