I have slightly mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed it more than I expected, I think because I had worried that the title might point to the adventure mimicking "The Da Vinci Code". I needn't have worried about that, the plot concerning the alien Carrionites being set free by words was clever and well written. The problem again is the 45 minute format.

This time we did have plenty of build-up, but the problem was the climax was too quick. This is partly because of the format, and partly due to the expense of the CGI Carrionites - which I thought were excellent. Not only did they look alien and somewhat scary, they blended in with the Globe theatre and their surroundings in a way that CGI characters often do not. Full marks to The Mill.

Martha...well she's settling in nicely. Again we have her thinking quickly, she could be the brightest companion in a long time and that is no bad thing. Her character is beginning to develop, and she's another well thought-out companion - very different to Rose but just as good.

So the plot was more clever than in Smith & Jones, the effects were great, the new companion is looking good...why was I left thinking it's not a great story? Perhaps one too many Shakespeare references. I really enjoyed the cameo with Queen Elizabeth at the end. 7.5/10

No, I didn't like it. Yes, I rolled my eyes at the cackling ugly "witches" and the oh-so-witty *koff koff* they inserted lines for Shakespeare to copy from when his idea of a good comeback is "Shut your big fat holes." Ha ha, very funny.

The witches were just utter garbage. There was no redeeming value to them as villains whatsoever. Right down to the broomstick, which about made me shut it off due to the sheer stupidity of it all but Miranda thought it was funny so I had to keep going. And once again, I must ask, WILL IT REALLY KILL DOCTOR WHO TO HAVE ONE "SUPERNATURAL" ENEMY THAT ACTUALLY IS SUPERNATURAL AS OPPOSED TO ALIENSESES?

Words are magick. Oh, wow, how revelatory THAT was. I mean, nevermind that Grant Morrison did an entire comic series back in the 90s called The Invisibles that had that as a major theme, but, er, what is it you use to cast spells? Words? MAGICK WORDS, even? Right...

And for words to have power, how absolutely gawdawful CLUNKY was that spell inserted into the play?

Oh, yes, Shakespeare. Yeah, it might've been amusing for the classic embodiment of a wordsmith to be a loudmouthed boor in "reality," but in Reality, there is still some considerable academic debate over the authorship of those plays, and to not even acknowledge it, even with a Tennantish dismissal, was kinda poor. I thought. And what kind of title is that? "The Shakespeare Code"? Were they even TRYING this week??

Yeah yeah, Ten/Martha chemistry, yessir.

I already know I'm in the minority on this episode, but it just seems to be everything I found wrong with "Tooth and Claw" is back in the forefront with this one, only with less vitriol. I failed to see the wit about most of it, indeed it seemed to be one of those "Merrie Englande" stereotype nostalgia episodes that fail utterly with me. And I never thought much of Gareth Roberts anyway. So, meh. Disappointing, if I had had high expectations of it to begin with.

And hmm, next week features something living at the heart of a mass-transit system. Gee, where have I seen THAT before....

Even in 1599, Londoners enjoyed nothing more than running and screaming; and back then it wasn't an unusual sight to see a major landmark light up like a Christmas tree and start spurting pyrotechnics either.? Nice to know nothing ever really changes.

It's almost a clich? now that the BBC do historical better than futuristic, and The Shakespeare Code was living proof of that.? Perhaps the most visually impressive (and flawless) Who to date, this low budget TV drama easily out-gunned major Hollywood blockbusters of the 80s and early 90s in the spectacle stakes.? Compare this with the equally spectacular ? but markedly less convincing ? New New York of the 'next time' trailer.

Despite my reservations about the pattern of the series following an almost identical path to last year, this still must rank as one of the best ever Doctor Who stories ? certainly one of the best two or three of the new series.

All right, let's start with the bad things.? I didn't like the Harry Potter references, they felt like a bit of a sop.? Shakespeare seemed to have a Liverpool accent for some odd reason; it would have felt more authentic if the character had spoken with his actual West Midlands accent.? And the witches were a bit silly, though this was forgivable as the episode was showing us the original of the archetype ? the witch blueprint that we know and love turns out to be based on an alien race.

The writer was clearly having a ball with the Shakespeare timeline, and especially giving us glimpses of the legendary lost play, 'Love's Labours Found'.? I don't know much about Shakey, but I think it must have been a similar feeling for Gareth Roberts as it would be for me to be given the chance to write an episode in which we see The Beatles recording their great lost album (now there's an idea for next year's inevitable Story 2 historical!).? Mr Roberts clearly relished putting words into the great man's mouth and staging the fictitious play.

As with Smith And Jones, the writers have laid off the heart-strings tugging of last year, so while it perhaps didn't have the emotional climax of some recent episodes, it did generally seem more fun and light-hearted ? instead we see that Elizabeth I is the Doctor's deadly enemy from a future adventure (he obviously makes a habit of annoying queens - he's not going to be getting any Christmas cards from Victoria any time soon either), a gag which I don't believe has ever cropped up in Doctor Who before, and Tennant's delighted reaction was a treat.

Rose was a nice enough lass, but I fail to see quite why her memory has such a hold over the Doctor ? I'm undecided as yet how interesting or enjoyable that particular thread is, but we shall see.

All in all, this is much better than I had expected it to be, and combined with Smith And Jones means that Season 3 is shaping up to be the strongest of the new series yet.

And no sonic screwdriver!!!!

It says something for a series when the not best of episodes are still bloody good telly. The kids will have loved the Witches, but old fans will hate it.

As the Doctor takes Martha Jones on a trip in the TARDIS to say thank you for helping him expose the Plasmavore in last week's opening episode of Series Three, they land in London 1599, where the eponymous Shakespeare is revered for his plays - and portrayed here as something approaching a rock star. This is a man who would have never have had to resort to appearing on Celebrity Big Brother had he been around nowadays.

Of course, not alot is known of the Bard as a person, so far as his personality goes, artistic license is given free reign. Here, the production team have opted to relieve a generation of school kids from English GCSE boredom and given him a new twist - he's a flirt, a genius, sexy, a celebrity and bloody likeable too. Dean Lennox Kelly plays him so convincingly that I don't think I could think of Shakespeare in any other way again. I loved the hints to his supposed bisexuality too.

In New Who, there's something for everyone - for the kids, the monsters and the scary bits, for the adults, the allusions to sex that will pass over their offsprings heads. The Shakespeare Code has plenty of both, from the surprisingly frank pre-credit opener to the Master of the Revels drowning on dry land. And - for adults at least - ?therein lies the problem with this weeks episode. It's New Series by numbers with none of the flair of the best of the bunch over the past two and a little bit years. The writing for the Doctor - apart from the scene in the bed - seemed almost flat, which is a cardinal sin, and despite Martha's wonderful glee at being in the past, and despite the brilliant set pieces of the streets and the Globe, it all seemed rather... ho-hum.

The Carrionites - witches by any other name - are a sure fire way of scaring kids. They're a staple of modern fiction and it's about time they were used. To me, though, their prosthetics looked a little too latex and their conviction a little too cardboard. I found I didn't really care about their evil plan and that the use of marrionettes could have been played upon a hell of a lot more effectively than it was.

What the Shakespeare Code lacks is spookiness to draw in the adults and keep them entertained as well as the younger generation. It's pure comic book Doctor Who, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it irritated me with all the missed opportunities and the too often repeated joke of giving Shakey good lines for his plays. Maybe I'd built myself up for Gareth Roberts' debut a little too much.

So, not the best of episodes then. The old fans will hate it, but the kids will love it. And that's ultimately what counts. Bloody good telly, but must try harder.

I knew we were in for a treat. That Gareth Roberts! It's a marvellous tongue in cheek love letter to Elizabethan England shot through with a meditation on female sexuality, fairy tales and the power of words. Fairly unique for 7.00pm on a Saturday night.

?From the opening gags on recycling, the 'water cooler moment' and global warming (one Roberts even dares to pick back up on right towards the end just to see if we're paying attention) through to the spit and cough Queen Elizabeth epilogue homage from 'Shakespeare In Love', the script is packed with one-liners, sight gags and physical comedy (the gurning witches - thanks Amanda and Linda - and the 'we're going the wrong way' bit).

David and Freema are really beginning to work very well here. Tennant in particular is fast becoming a riveting leading man, commanding the majority of the scenes he's in. The standout scenes must be the Doctor's bedroom tete a tete with Martha, the interrogation of Peter Streete (a lovely, twitchy performance from Matt King) and the joust with Lilith (the spectrally beautiful Christina Cole) where he uses Rose's name to give him the strength to fight back.

Freema is a revelation in her scenes with Tennant in the bedroom. For me, this is now the benchmark for the character of Martha and her feelings towards the Doctor. The crushing disappointment when he finds her lacking compared to Rose is sublimely played. He's so very cruel in that moment and it's written all over Freema's face. A lovely scene and one that I assume will now give the audience a better perception of the Martha/Doctor dynamic as the series progresses. And she's constantly seen asking the right kind of questions and thinking about the situation she finds herself in which is consistent character development.

Dean Lennox Kelly puts in a sparky performance and with the help of Roberts well researched and witty script manages to subvert our expectations of the Bard. The whole perception of him is a delicious conceit - the greatest English writer is nothing more than a clever Bernard Manning. He even starts channelling that erstwhile comedian's penchant for race relations in trying to chat up Martha.

References pile upon references - ?from the lines of his plays being dropped into conversations and showing him up for the magpie writer he might have been, to the cultural nods to Back To The Future (explaining temporal paradoxes), Harry Potter (magic isn't just for children) to the more obscure shot across the bows of academia during the 'flirting' scene. '57 academics just punched the air' indeed! The visual references echo everything from 'Shakespeare In Love' to the 'The Wizard Of Oz'.

It's a dizzying brew with assured direction from Charles Palmer. It may not be as flashy as Euros Lyn's work on 'Tooth And Claw' but it is still dynamic and colourful. The matte work and CGI by The Mill add a richness of tone to the proceedings and the work done to populate the Globe theatre was quite magnificent. The production team were pushing out the stops on this and it does show. It's a very handsome looking episode.

Woven through all of this fantastic wordsmithery is an interesting look at female sexuality, particularly in relation to its opposing/complimentary male counterpart. The three witches could clearly be seen as the the 'maiden, mother, whore' symbolic trinity using their wiles to re-fertilise a womb (male utterances to reactivate the crystal and open the portal).

This blind force of nature wedded to techno-magic is set in opposition to two men who lack or have lost an element of their feminine nature. Shakespeare is suffering from the death of a child, a symbolic loss of feminine/masculine creation and the Doctor has lost Rose, a woman he clearly loved and an essential part of his humanisation over the last two series. Both men must convert this destructive female power in order to retain their own humanity and creativity. It's again odd that Queen Liz marches in at the end and claims the Doctor as her sworn enemy - ?what is it with the Doctor and female monarchy?

There's also a thread running through this, often reflecting this battle of the sexes as it were, to do with the fine line between madness and genius. Shakespeare was nearly driven mad by the loss of his child but overcomes this through the act of writing, the Doctor can tip too far into darkness without the balancing aspect of Rose, Donna or, one would hope, Martha. And an architect is driven mad by witches demanding he builds a theatre to their specific dimensions. It's a fine line indeed.

The power of words and their meaning and double meanings, names as weapons and emblems of salvation are also symbolic of making the unconscious conscious and brought under rational control - ?hence the banishing of the Carrionite and the 'spell' to close the portal are interventions in dampening rampant female power. And let's not forget the power of names wherein Lilith is known symbolically as the primitive feminine principle, one that was rejected and repressed. She's often personified as the enemy of family life and children.

All this is subtly shadowing the riot of activity in the story and gives meaning to what might appear to be on the surface as a bit of jolly period flippancy and provides the driving force of the story. Clever man, Roberts!

Smashing. You can have a laugh, check off the cliches and still find enough substance to think about.

It is hard to believe that in twenty-eight years of time-travelling television the Doctor and the Bard have never once crossed paths. Okay, so we saw a brief clip of Hugh Walters' Shakespeare way back in the 1965 six-parter "The Chase", but even then he didn't actually meet the Doctor. Other than that one fleeting glimpse, Shakespeare's appearances in Doctor Who have been strictly limited to the non-televised adventures.

Until now.

"Shut yer big fat mouths!"

Gareth Roberts' script has revitalised Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. Whilst little is known about the man himself, most people have a pretty definite picture in their heads of a bald and austere Elizabethan playwright. Gareth Roberts' script and Dean Lennox Kelly's performance combine to create Shakespeare the celebrity. Shakespeare the rock star. Cool Shakespeare.

His attitude towards the Doctor and Martha is fascinating. I love the mutual respect that the Doctor and Bard seem to share, and I love the idea that the Doctor supplied him with half of his best quotes! What I found the most impressive though, was how Shakespeare almost instantly gets the measure of the Doctor and Martha. He can see that he is an alien and that she is from the future. He can see through the psychic paper. He is, as they say, a genius.

"57 academics just punched the air!"

It's also nice that Shakespeare doesn't automatically gravitate towards Martha. Obviously he's attracted to this "Queen of Afric", but he's equally enchanted with the Doctor. Lovely little lines like the one above demonstrate that, like with all good historical episodes, the writer has really done his homework and squeezed in a little bit of historical truth / scandal / rumour which, along with the pungent smell described by Martha, only adds to the sense of historical realism. Similarly, the loss of Shakespeare's son has the same effect, as well as offering an explanation for the playwright's past (and possible future?) madness.

And of course, it's always brilliant to see the Doctor messing about with our own history. Feeding Shakespeare lines. Giving him his trademark neck brace. Even giving him the idea for the name of a character in The Tempest. The Doctor even wipes a tear from his eye as Shakespeare recites his "Sonnet 18" for Martha.

"Upon this night the work is done, a muse to pen Love's Labour's Won."

The legend of "Love's Labour's Won" was definitely the perfect place to start for a Shakespeare episode. At first, I thought the episode's title "The Shakespeare Code" was purely homage to Dan Brown's blockbuster novel, but it turns out that it does actually fit the story like a glove. This episode is about a "different sort of science" ? a science founded on wordplay, names and codes.

But every Doctor Who story needs a villain and ? again quite incredibly ? in twenty-eight years of television the Doctor has never met a good ol' fashioned Witch. And here we are treated to just that ? broomstick; warts; and magic spells. Doomfinger. Bloodtide. Lilith. The fa?ade of beauty. It's all textbook stuff, executed magnificently by Gareth Roberts with his customary wit and poise.

"Ooh? I hate starting from scratch."

Above all else though, "The Shakespeare Code" is about Martha's first voyage in the TARDIS. The questions that she asks; the way that she reacts; it's all very different to how Rose reacted to being transported back in time in "The Unquiet Dead". Martha's first thoughts aren't about how beautiful the past is ? they're about the Grandfather Paradox. About slavery.

I'm also glad that Roberts didn't go overboard on the exposition. Whilst a certain amount of explaining had to be done for the sake of realism, as an audience now even the newest fans are au fait with all the ins and outs of everything from the psychic paper to the sonic screwdriver. However, each and every explanation that is given is handled masterfully by Roberts ? I have never heard the whole 'time is in flux' lecture explained as succinctly as it is here. Back To The Future indeed?

"Now that's one form of magic that is definitely not going to work on me."

And as for the 'soapy stuff' as my Dad calls it ? once again, full marks have to be given to all involved. Writer. Actors. Directors. The lot.

The bedroom scene is a thing of beauty. It sums up the Doctor so very well; it even sums up Martha's unrequited feelings and growing sense of rejection. "We'll manage, c'mon. You gonna stand there all night?" says the Doctor, lying in bed. When she joins eventually him, he then rolls onto his side to look her straight in the eye. He says out loud that he can't see what's staring him straight in the face. But he doesn't mean the obvious. He isn't even in the room with her. He's off on a beach in a parallel universe.

"Rose'd know."

He calls her a 'novice' and tells her that she's going home. And I'm glad. As much as I like Martha, for the Doctor to suddenly turn up in Series Three and fall head over heels for 'the new girl' would have not only been insulting to Rose, but it would have negated the entire new series to date. The Doctor loved Rose, blatantly. But he doesn't feel so strongly about all his companions, and that is part of the reason why the whole Rose saga was so moving. She was the exception, not the rule. And that's what Martha is beginning to learn in this series.

The finale is absolute spectacular. The C.G.I. of not only the Carrionites but of the Globe and of the city is absolutely outstanding. I'm sure that nearly every kid watching loved the whole "Expelliamus!" bit too; the culmination of an episode's worth of (quite appropriate) Harry Potter references. I also enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek ending featuring Elizabeth I ? it's wonderful when the show incorporates the odd time paradox like that. It's not done enough in my opinion.

In all, "The Shakespeare Code" is another triumph. I'm getting sick of praising the new series so much, but it is becoming increasingly hard to pick fault with. David Tennant in the role he was born to play. Freema Agyeman with another flawless performance. Dean Lennox Kelly as the definitive Shakespeare.

This time last year, I was thinking "the second series won't be as good as the first". And, although I probably won't be able to say so objectively for another ten years or so, I reckon that it was just as good, if not better. And a couple of weeks ago I was thinking "the third series won't be as good as the second," but here I am, two weeks in, lauding it as the greatest series yet. On balance, it's certainly had the strongest start of the three seasons.