When I first found out that The Weakest Link and Big Brother were going to be in this episode I thought that Russell T Davies had lost the plot. However I have to say that after seeing the episode I am impressed at the way it was done. I am glad that Anne and Davina were willing to do the voices for the Anne and Davina Droids, I somehow don’t think it would have been the same if they hadn’t done them.

The Captain Jack makeover was quite amusing to, this is a character that I like and will be sad to see go. The reminder of all the Bad Wolf references was a nice touch. Then for the 1st time that I can remember this series, The Doctor looked distraught and lost; when he thought that Rose had been disintegrated. The panning out on the fleet of Dalek ships added to the drama and the way they showed the hundreds of Daleks on the ship was a great touch to I felt, complete with a couple of Daleks in hover mode.

I must confess that overall I have not been a great fan of the Russell T Davies episodes to much, but with this episode I have to give credit where credit is due. If someone had told me a year ago, that in the new Doctor Who series, the Daleks would be controlling TV Stations broadcasting The Weakest Link and Big Brother amongst other things, I would have laughed at them. Indeed last week when I saw the trailer for this week’s episode I still wasn’t sure. But in my opinion Russell has done a fantastic job on this episode and I am looking forward to next week’s episode.

Well, what can I say? Words can scarse compel me to begin describing the brilliance of what I've seen today.

Picture this, the psychotic Ann Robinson droid, with Rose before her, laughing as if it is all a joke but then sensing the sinister truth behind the gameshow facade. Rose soon begins to quake as the Add droid disintegrates a contestant.

The Doctor on the other hand finds himself in the Big Brother house and I can tell you, it's not as bad as you may all think. I began watching this episode with dread for what the BB content was going to do to it, but let me tell you, everything in the episode was put together brilliantly.

Captain Jack naked...mmm rather tasty if I do say so myself. After blasting the Trinny and Susanna bots head off our sexy hero makes a dash for it and finds the Doctor with a new friend, Lynda with a Y not an I.

Things get heated as the Doctor witnesses Rose disintegrated herself, turned to a mere pile of ash (pity though, the resiliant cow escapes death aboard a Dalek saucer).

As the episode draws to a climatic cliffhanger, the Controller, a human linked to the Game Station computers is beamed off the ship where she is exterminated by the Daleks after completeing whatever ghastly plan the Daleks had set her to.

The Doctor is told by Jack that Rose is still alive and uncovering the Dalek saucers, he engages them in conversation.

The Daleks and their saucers...wow! Excellently done, a true homage to the sixties designs. Rose is held as hostage to force the Doctor to whatever plan the metal meanies have in mind. He tells them 'No'.

So the episode ended. But what of next week?

Doctor "But how did you survive the Time War?" he asks the Daleks onboard their ship.

Unknown voice "They survived through me" a familiar Dalek-like voice come from behind the Doctor. Is this Bad Wolf?

Overall, I would give this episode ten out of ten. Russell. T. Davis, you're a genius!

No, No, NO!!! Doctor Who is SF not fantasy and therefore needs a plausible reality extrapolated universe to inhabit otherwise all plausibility is lost. The success of the Star-Trek franchise is because they take it seriously and make the viewer believe. Personally I do not believe that:

1) a so called 'transmat beam' could pluck him and his companions out of the previously impregnable TARDIS.

2) the Doctor would yet again arrive on Space Station 5 - perhaps the most tedious place in the universe unless the sets and CGI had to be reused for budgetary reasons: expect Maureen to turn up at any moment...

3) 200+ years in the future the occupants of Earth will still be watching late 20th Century TV shows ('Ground Force?!!) whether they involve termination or not. If you want to make a point about the current state of TV then you're going to have to be a lot more artful and inventive than this to pull it off - sixth form rubbish. Robotic Trinny & Susannah/Anne Robinson? Candyman anyone?

4) the Doctor would make a scientific howler of the first magnitude: when describing the Dalek's stealth technology he says (and I paraphrase): "... nothing can reveal them: not radar, .... or sonar.." SONAR?! Hardly surprising that a sound based ranging system won't work in a vacuum right? This is typical of the pseudo-scientific rubbish that infests the series. It just shows that the writers are not of a sufficient quality to handle SF. At least the pseudo-science in Star_Trek is plausible within its own context even if it is based on zero fact: Dr Who is just plain ignorant and it ruins the series for anyone with a brain.

5) The 'Ultimate Killing Cyborgs' (tm) capture Rose and threaten to kill her unless the Doctor does what they ask. He says 'no' and they are so surprised that they get flummoxed, forget about Rose and trundle off in a panic to finish their dastardly scheme in a hurry just in case... For heaven's sake... :-(

6) If the Daleks wanted the Doctor dead then they had endless opportunities and logically the power to implement any of them (this may become a plot point so with this point I'm on shaky ground). It does have a whiff of Dr Evil about it: explain how the Doctor is going to die long enough for him to escape.

In summary what I'm really saying is that the creators of the series are out of their depth. They got it right with 'Empty Child' and 'Father's Day' but that only serves to highlight the deficiencies in the rest of the series. Poor writing for kids instead of quality writing of a winning SF series. A terrible wasted opportunity and typical of the BBC.

Aliens in London'/'WW3' were among my least favourite episodes, yet last week's 'Boom Town' proved unexpectedly watchable -- so I didn't switch off the television when another of my season lows, 'The Long Game', stepped into the reprise spot. I hated the idea of reality tv for higher stakes (there's got to be a pile of sf stories that play that card). Played out, though, it was more enjoyable than I'd anticipated: Jack's Dayna reprise was cute, and some of the re-envisaged programmes were hilarious ('Ground Force', who knew?). The rapid intercutting of the three scenarios generated enough tension to drive things along.

In contrast, the stuff on the station felt like a return to the old running-round-in-corridors paradigm, and I worried that the Controller had been borrowed from somewhere else ('Minority Report'?). Despite the Bad Wolf references all season, the dramatic end seemed to come out of nowhere in particular.

In the plus column, 'Bad Wolf' features another strong performance from Eccleston, who just seems to be getting better & better, and there are tonnes of solid supporting performances: Rodrick, Strood, Crosbie, Broff, Davage... in fact pretty much everyone except Rose clone Linda-with-a-y; here's hoping she's the obligatory female sacrifice for the finale.

Joe Ahearne's directed some of the most visually exciting episodes of the series, and 'Bad Wolf' has pretty shots aplenty: Davage's blue-lit face when we first see level 500 & the Dalek in reflection struck me particularly. On the other hand, the Dalek fleet had an Ed Wood saucer-on-a-stick feel about it.

Despite my doubts about the ending, it does make an excellent concept cliff-hanger... How did the Controller bring the Doctor to the station? Did she plug in all the Bad Wolf references? How? Is there some link with the soul of the Tardis? What are the Daleks doing with all the losing contestants? Are Jack's missing two years relevant to the Time Wars? Did the Doctor somehow bring about the Time Lords/Daleks destruction? Will he do the female thing, & sacrifice himself to save the world? Will he have to choose between saving Rose & Rose clone? And the biggie: how are they ever going to tie everything up in 45 minutes?

I just hope some of the above will prove to have interesting answers....

Say what you will, but that Russell T Davies chap knows a thing or two about timing. The children's BBC forums have recently voted Dr Who their favourite TV show (trouncing the previously unshakeable Simpsons); their favourite subject for a new message board (beating Buffy, hobbies and mobile phones into the ground), and very nearly their favourite thing (narrowly defeated by Harry Potter, but still way ahead of friends, family and food). The only thing that could possibly topple the series from its television supremacy was that annual festival of relentless shrieking vacuity Big Brother. So what does Russell T do? The impossible, as usual. He puts the Doctor in the Big Brother house.

Genius.

Beyond genius. Shameless commercialism. And quite, quite impossible. Endemol will never agree to it. The BBC will never agree to it. The viewers will never tolerate it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Everyone says yes. Just this once, Rose - everyone says yes.

Never mind that this is technically a sequel to an earlier (and, unjustly, not very well liked) story. Never mind that the splitting up of the TARDIS crew makes for a slightly repetitive opening. Never mind that the tying up of loose ends from earlier in the series requires some clumsy exposition, or that there isn't as much humour as you'd expect, or that Captain Jack once again pulls a solution out of his ass. For once let's not even mind that the incidental music is obtrusive and repetitive, given that this time that's the whole point. Bad Wolf is, despite all that, genius.

By this time you can write the reviews in your sleep, and maybe that would be better. I can't say what's so good about this episode, the spoiler-pressure is all but insurmountable. The bit where - ! Well, yes. Or that moment when - but no. Can't be done, it would ruin the whole thing (which is why, perhaps, the Beeb does need its knuckles rapped over the preview from Boom Town, although that's still only the half of it). So go ahead. You know how it goes. The script is sharp, witty, pacy and powerful. The design is (even as rehash of sets from reality TV shows and The Long Game) deft, daft and intelligent, a perfect blend of human and alien. The central TARDIS trio of Jack, Rose and the Doctor are all snappily written and brilliantly portrayed. The additional characters are fun, instantly recogniseable, elegantly honed. Every beat is on the money. Every shot a corker. And though you may not know this yet, the pitch-perfect shaping of the central emotional drama is... perfect.

And the truly extraordinary thing - by which I mean, of course, the truly extraordinary thing other than the fact that none of this is even remotely the best thing about it, but I can't tell you that, can't say that, can't stand the confusion in my mind - is that this is just what we've come to expect. We'd feel cheated if we got any less. Because these days, that's what Doctor Who is.

Let me tell you this. I was in a pub last night. Perfectly ordinary pub. Then someone shrieks in horror - they've done it again! They've missed an episode of Dr Who! And suddenly, everyone joins in. Geeks squabble about time paradoxes. Near strangers argue over whether Dalek or The Empty Child was more scary. Perfectly intelligent people attempt to say Raxacoricofallapatorius. Ridiculous, but true.

And the day before: another conversation, in another pub, about how everything on television is rubbish these days. I never watch it, gruff men with pipes staunchly declaim. Absolute twaddle. Nothing worth watching. Oh, except Dr Who, of course. Unheard of, but that's the way it was.

And then today, the reason this is more relevant to Bad Wolf than all the others, and the real reason next week's finale can never, ever hope to live up to expectations. My mum, my actual mum calls me, seconds after the music fades, to gush that tonight's episode was the most exciting piece of telly she'd ever seen. Impossible. Absolutely impossible, like getting the BBC and Channel 4 to co-operate, one using the other's format to parody the very nature of television, and no-one seeming to mind. But I swear to god, it happened.

This is not the world I grew up in. I always knew this was the best show in the world. No-one ever agreed with me. But thanks to Russell T, just this once - everyone says yes.

For about the first 30 minutes of this episode I thought to myself, what a loud of crap. It was absolutely terrible, mainly cause I've never been a huge fan of reality TV, and I absolutely hate Big Brother. There were alot of things that I really hated about this episode, and one of them was Captain Jack, I really can't stand him, he is like a mosquito that won't go away. The character is so arrogant, and just seems to have no purpose in any of the stories that he has been in, he should've had one episode and thats all. I espeically hated when he was touching the androids breasts. I really was hoping that when the androids arm became a chainsaw that she would do the world a favour and chop his head off.

I do have to admit though that the climax of the story was brilliant, really tying in the Bad Wolf references that we have so often heard throughout every episode this series. However I still don't understand how Bad Wolf being graffitied on the TARDIS or a small mention by Gwenyth has to do with the Daleks invasion. It was an excellent build up, and by the time you got to the climax you completely forgot all about the stupidity of the first 30 minutes.

The final few shots of the Daleks in their ships were just magic, as were the previews for next week. And is it just me or did I hear Davros at the end!!!! I really hope that the end solution to this is not that the Daleks get completely wiped out, I think it would be terrible, the Daleks should live on. But I do hope that in the wake of this epsidode that Captain Jack gets killed, and that the BBC get a new Producer/Head Writer for the series. Sorry Russell, but if the Daleks weren't in this episode then it would've been just another one of your pathetic epsiodes. Funny enough however this has been the only RTD episode that isn't based around characterisation, but the first 30 minutes of rubbish really spoil the episode. I thought the story could've worked without references to shows like Big Brother and the Weakest Link. I did however like the reference to the Long Game, and how we see the consequences of the Doctor's actions in that episode, and that it isn't always 'and they lived happily ever after'.

Overall, the climax of this episode is exellent, just looking at 200 Dalek ships preparing for battle is unbelievable, but as mentioned previously the first 30 minutes were absolute rubbish. I really hope the next episode doesn't ruin the best cliffhanger for the season, and I pray that the last episode for the series isn't going to be more RTD rubbish.