"Boom Town" was possibly more aptly named than intended.

Stories by Russell T Davies have certainly caused a small division in fandom. Regardless of RTD's success in bring Doctor Who back to strong form, his style of writing for Doctor Who has been a cause of concern for many fans.

So with fans from both camps, for and against RTD, anxiously waiting to be proved righteous as to whether he can deliver anything en par with "The Empty Child", "Father's Day" or "The Doctor Dances", "Boom Town" has a burden of expectation that it could probably do with out. Is this episode in which Doctor Who self destructs, derailing it's past success? Well, no. In fact, it's a mixed affair, a messy one at that. One could argue it offers strong evidence to either side of the divide. There is good and bad here.

"Boom Town" is very much a character story hidden within a plot-orientated affair. As such, it offers an odd mix of direction and pacing. Unfortunately this feels far from intentional. While it may have been hoped that the intense plot dialogue about a nuclear facility being placed in Cardiff as part of an attempt for a Sithreen to escape Earth by destroying it (and breathe..) would form a good red herring to the actual direction of the story, it simply feels messy.

The biggest problem with "Boom Town" is it tries to do too much when the premise is strong enough to work in a far simpler format.

This is the biggest surprise from RTD. Whether one likes his humour or general light drama approach to his stories, his tales are always well paced and easy to digest. With the story both trying to be an action tale and a character tale at once, this is certainly not the case with "Boom Town".

Which is a pity really as there are some great moments in “Boom Town” which would make any RTD, nay, Doctor Who fan, proud. Christopher Eccleston is given a wonderful mix of serious and humour based scenes to work with. What makes his role even stronger is that for the first time in a while, he's not focused on Rose. We get to see the Doctor rather than the DoctorRose symbiote. While Rose is a good companion for the season, the Doctor's dependency on her weakens his character. Here we see a Doctor who isn't fawning over his companion or overtly worrying about her. In fact, this feels very much a Doctor/Companion relationship of old.

Part of this has to be attributed to Captain Jack. Jack is a great addition to the crew, diluting the Doctor/Rose dynamic and offering a new element to the crew. It's nice to have a companion that doesn't serve as an interface for the viewer. Sometimes Doctor Who suffers with three crewmembers. The show doesn’t need two companions both asking “What’s going on Doctor?” for the sake of explaining plot to the viewer. You only need one companion to use that phrase. If one is to have two companions, they both have to offer something different to the mix from each other. Like Turlough and Romana, Jack is more on a technological wavelength of the Doctor, which means the show has another character to motivate the more sci-fi elements of the story. Jack makes a nice medium between Rose and the Doctor and I really hope he stays in for a good few more episodes.

The character plots primarily revolve around the nature of the Doctor and Rose's relationship with Mickey. To my surprise Mickey really pulls these scenes together. His frustration and exasperation is a credit to the actor and the writing.

The Doctor's restaurant scene is wonderful also. It is a totally different atmosphere to the Rose/Mickey scenes, but just as emotionally charged. Credit to both Eccleston and Annette Badland for their strong performances and again to RTD for the solid script.

The failure for Boom Town is it doesn't really go anyway. It doesn't really feel like it resolves the issue of the Doctor's destructive lifestyle or his culpability for the damage he causes. Not that there is probably a sufficient answer, but the questions RTD asks are ones not really considered prior to this series. He paints the Doctor as a man who almost murders through intent to interfere who then rushes before the dust falls. We see very little evidence of that in the show so it does seem a rather odd proposal. Certain the character seems to feel there is a hint of truth there - which is fair enough. People who can carry responsibility and power often have high expectations of what they can do, I don't see why the Doctor shouldn't have those same high expectations of the good he wants to achieve and the guilt he feels for failing the few. That said, the script almost makes the hypothesis feel like fact, rather than maybe an issue simply plaguing the Doctor and that doesn't really sit right. I think one is very hard pushed to make such comparisons between the murderous Siltheen and the Doctor nevertheless the script tries.

So it's the lack of resolution that makes Boom Town feel most confuddled. The ending just pops up out of the blue and resolves just as fast. The power of the TARDIS jars for the same reason. It's importance in the story resolution has no hint earlier on and so comes out of no where... that seems a little odd in terms of story writing. If you don't present the audience with some hint of what the means of resolution in an earlier chapter, it can leave viewers feeling cheated.

So the story is a mix of pros and cons. There are some great scenes and dialogue, but a story that feels rough around the edges. It has a good set of characters, but lacks any real cohesion between their roles in the tale.

I would say this is way above average, but certainly the most inconsistent story so far. “Boom Town” is certainly more interesting than “Rose”, but feels as if it needed another draft. In that respect, perhaps the first story to be akin to the old series ... how many of those stories do you want to pick up the script and give one final rewrite?

Despite the most wafer-thin and implausible ostensible plot possibly ever in the series (alien disguised as MP plans to set up nuclear power station in Cardiff town centre), one which makes a bus full of Adventure-Game-style aliens traveling to a 1950s Welsh holiday camp (Delta & the Bannermen) look comparatively believable on paper, this peculiar episode managed to shake off initial absurdities and Rent-a-Ghost-style shenanigans (Margaret going back and forth via the DoctorВ’s sonic screwdriver-cum-transmat device) relatively early on В– thankfully the SlitheenВ’s gustatory problems were restricted to just a stomach gurgle this time round. Scatological elements thankfully toned down since the atrocious Aliens/War III, we were however still treated to one scene in which the Slitheen, fully revealed and far more convincing in its tangibility (courtesy of a mask rather than CGI), sat on a toilet as it talked through the door to a woman and wept on her mention of being В‘with childВ’ В– strangely this scene was actually fairly well done despite its lavatorial location (is RTD going to finally reveal what Davros has been sat on in his Dalek seat all these years?). What ensues in this episode, finally, after all the token faffing around between the Doctor et al is finished with, is a quite engaging face off between the Doctor and the Slitheen in a restaurant. Annette Badland gives a genuinely powerful performance in this scene, delivering her probing of the Doctor on his dubiously catalystic lifestyle with impressive intensity and gravitas В– this performance of BadlandВ’s is a far cry from her pantomimesque portrayal in Aliens/War III. We get an equally intriguing steely glint from EcclestonВ’s eye in this scene too. The rest of the episode continues this moral examination of the true nature of the Doctor and his time traveling pursuits and more particularly on the general philosophical question of crime and punishment, more specifically capital punishment, and the responsibility of those who assist the administration of moral law В– quite interestingly and unexpectedly, the Doctor brushes off MargaretВ’s protests with a curt В‘Not my problemВ’, placing himself in a position of moral impunity from the inevitable result of his transporting his prisoner back to her home planet; his speech about the caprice of the psychotic mind (in terms of the SlitheenВ’s doing good or evil simply on whims) is a convincing and incisive stance, and indeed this meditation on the God-like power of giving or taking life is contrasted nicely by Margaret deflecting the issue onto the DoctorВ’s own exercise of power through time travel. Another good touch was the Doctor re-educating the audience on the nature of the Tardis and how the chameleon-circuit got stuck as a police box in 1960s London.

The downsides to Boomtown? Well, being an RTD script, one has come to expect inevitable troughs among the all-too-few peaks: the ludicrously inappropriate banter in the Tardis at the beginning, chiefly the Doctor saying to Jack when he complains of not getting a hug from Rose, В‘Give me a drink and you might get oneВ’, or something similarly puerile; the stupid run-around after Margaret in the non-descript streets of Cardiff (they might have at least found better locations such as the old arcade there or the castle grounds); the irritating and inept banter of the Tardis crew in a completely non-descript cafГ©; and the ludicrous suggestion by Margaret that she and the Doctor are on some sort of date. There are other annoyances but I canВ’t be bothered to list them В– lifeВ’s too short.

Summing up В– customary RTD irritations aside, Boomtown is a surprisingly В‘all rightВ’ episode by and large, with some fairly deep meditations on morality which in places are reminiscent of the far more sublime meditations on the darker side of Gallifreyans in Edge of Destruction, the third story in the original cannon. In terms of script and execution this is in my opinion RTDВ’s best contribution to the series so far, having the edge over The Long Game by a whisker; and this did come as a surprise for an episode I was absolutely dreading.

Once again, it had been a while since IВ’d seen a new Who episode В– I was still reeling from the sheer brilliance of CornellВ’s FatherВ’s Day and MoffatВ’s Empty Child extravaganza. Like the first Slitheen story, IВ’d heard practically nothing but bad things about this episode, even from the most forgiving of fans, and the last RTD-penned episode IВ’d seen had been the passable but still forgettable Long GameВ… so suffice it to say, I was a little worried. Especially when the episode began with a cringe-inducing recap of Aliens Of London. Great. The last thing I wanted at this point was to be reminded of that thorn in this seriesВ’ side.

But thenВ… six months later. And Margaret Blaine is again in a position of power, eating the threats to her master plan. But thereВ’s a difference this time around, which is evident from the start. And thatВ’s Mr Joe Ahearne, he of Dalek and FatherВ’s Day. Ahearne has achieved what I thought to be impossible. HeВ’s made the Slitheen scary. And, it seems, heВ’s made Cardiff look interesting, even from the establishing shots of Mickey arriving. Okay, itВ’s not Paris, itВ’s not New York, but at least itВ’s not sodding London again.

When Mickey knocked on the TARDIS door, it was flung open by a guy I didnВ’t recognise until I heard his accent. Oh yeah, thereВ’s a new companion aboard! And as far as I could remember from the last story, he was terrific! Well, he was still pretty good, and his banter with the Doctor was brilliant, butВ… well, I guess I preferred him in a WWII setting. Too bad he didnВ’t keep the outfit. Or the haircut. Oh well. This scene is saturated with playful banter, continuity and exposition. I was oddly reminded of the early days with William Hartnell and his crew. Not such a bad thing.

The scene with Margaret and the reporter, Cathy Salt, was beautifully done. True, weВ’ve already seen one monster suddenly get human emotions in this series, but Annette Badland is just wonderful. And the image of a Slitheen weeping on the toilet, though it should be hilarious, is incredibly touching. Another masterstroke by Joe Ahearne. Meanwhile. the TARDIS gang has found out sheВ’s around, and theyВ’re out to get her. And they really are the TARDIS gang, the four of them. It felt a lot like Buffy, or the Davison years. I guess sometimes a crowded TARDIS can work. The chase around the building was handled really well, a great blend of slapstick and suspense В– I was reminded of World War Three. Of course, she got captured, and we discovered her evil planВ… but hang on! Barely twenty minutes have passed! What about the second half of the episode?

Well, this is a Russell T. Davies script, innit? So naturally, in among the 21st-century references and the cheeky jokes, weВ’re in for a bit of rumination on the nature ofВ… stuff. Stuff thatВ’s been lingering in the background of Doctor Who for years, but has never been fully explored. This time itВ’s about what happens to the monsters after theyВ’ve been foiled. What if the Doctor canВ’t just run off without watching them burn? What if heВ’s stuck with them until their sentence is carried out? When I heard the plotline for the 1996 TV movie, I was intrigued В– the Doctor is carrying the MasterВ’s remains to Gallifrey, after all this time; how will he deal with that emotionally? В– but in the end, that wasnВ’t even mentioned. So now RTD is tackling the issue head-on В– the Doctor has to bring his captive to dinner. And yes, their В“dateВ” is peppered with witty banter and sight gags and the like (I loved what he did with the breath-freshener!), but primarily this scene illustrates the difficult ordeal faced by both the Doctor and his captive. The Doctor must finally look the monster in the eye, and even socialise with her. The monster must beg for one last chance at redemption.

Meanwhile, Rose and Mickey are off on one of their Rose-and-Mickey scenes. I expected this. In fact, I wouldВ’ve been disappointed not to see a scene like this in an episode where Mickey featured. Their storyline has progressed in a realistic way, from RoseВ’s abandonment of Mickey, to her sudden reappearance a year later, to the DoctorВ’s eventual acceptance of В“RickyВ”, to her decision to stay on as a companion. And Mickey is always waiting for her. And we know he always will. I donВ’t know if weВ’ve ever heard him say it, but really he doesnВ’t need to, because itВ’s obvious. He loves her, very much.

But thereВ’s no time for that В– the Gelth rift has torn open, and the TARDIS is going to be at the centre of CardiffВ’s destruction. Surprise, surprise, В“MargaretВ” is behind it all, and plans to use her extrapolator to surf along the shock wave to safety. (IВ’m not sure if I liked the idea of a cosmic surfboard, but hey, there was that question-mark umbrellaВ…) Suddenly, the TARDIS console opensВ… what the? This has never, ever happened before. WhatВ’s that light? The heart of the TARDIS? Better idea than the Eye of Harmony, anyway. And it regresses the Slitheen back into an egg. People have criticised this deus ex machina ending, but I feel it works quite well. A second chanceВ… whatВ’s wrong with that? Rose seems to agree. And of course sheВ’s talking about Mickey. Somehow we know their story isnВ’t over.

So there you have it. Boom Town. A quiet muse about the implications of the DoctorВ’s actions. Some great В“TARDIS teamВ” antics, a brilliant turn from Annette Badland, the continuation of the Rose-and-Mickey soap, and a bit of sci-fi drama at the end. All in all, a good little story, a terrific script by Mr Davies, and another masterstroke of direction by Joe Ahearne. Something occurred to me when the end credits rolled past В– there were only two episodes to go. I was going to miss this. The Ninth Doctor, Rose, even Jack. Such a superb team. I knew theyВ’d be gone soonВ… and I wasnВ’t ready to say goodbye just yet. So IВ’ve decided to go all the way back to the beginning, to the first episode, and watch it all again, before I get to my final two reviews. I want to get a clear view of the series as a whole before I bid it farewell. ItВ’s going to take a while, but I have a feeling I wonВ’t be disappointedВ…

"You know, Doctor, we're not so different, you and I... except that you fly around the universe saving people's lives and I blow up populated planets to make a cheap buck."

So goes "Boom Town," Russell Davies's experiment in "deep" moral drama. The concept here is that the Doctor runs into the aftermath of one of his previous interventions, and is forced to confront the repercussions and question the morality of his actions. Not a bad idea. The success of the execution, however, hinges on how much sympathy we can have for an alien mass-murderer who tried to eradicate the human race for personal profit and will try to do so again - twice - before the hour is up. It doesn't go well.

Davies decides to pick a reunion with the Slitheen, his rather uninspiring fart monsters from the "Aliens of London" two-parter. While regrettable in and of themselves, the Slitheen don't necessarily make or break this story; there's no reason Davies can't give his Slitheen survivor a makeover to add a touch of depth, something to make us identify and sympathize with the character. Instead, Davies simply leaves us with what he assumes is a moral dilemma and leaves us - and the Doctor - to work it out on our own: Margaret Slitheen, whose family was - sob! - killed by the Doctor, will be executed if returned to her home planet. If the Doctor returns her there, as he insists, he is her de facto executioner. How, oh how, is he any better than she?

Even if this were all that Davies left us with, it really wouldn't be enough to work. We've seen "Aliens of London"; the Slitheen family were cold-blooded killers who slaughtered innocents in a plot to nuke Earth and sell off its radiated crust for fuel, and it's hard to see how their deaths are any more regrettable than the deaths of any number of Daleks guilty of similar crimes who at least had the honesty to never pretend to be anything more than hateful murderers. If the deaths of the other Slitheen were acceptable, how is Margaret Slitheen's execution any less so? But Davies doesn't even leave us with the hollow pretense of a moral dilemma: by episode's end we will see that Margaret isn't reformed in the least, that she will attempt to blow up the Earth yet again, that she has no compunction against taking and killing hostages whenever it suits her, that she would no doubt do the same to other worlds in time if she had the chance. As drama, this episode works only if I can see the Doctor's plan to hand over the Slitheen as morally dubious; if I see the Slitheen as a foul, two-faced mass-murderer who needs to die to preserve the lives of innocents - which is how Davies's script ultimately portrays her, her protests of innocence reading as nothing more than a ploy for self-preservation - then I have nothing invested in her continued existence, and the moral ambiguity on which the episode is built collapses.

It doesn't help that the actual resolution to this faux-moral quandry is a deus ex machina which allows the Doctor to do precisely what the episode is accusing him of doing: avoid the repercussions of his actions. Whereas before he would have to personally deliver the Slitheen to serve her death sentence, a heretofore unrevealed wish-granting property of the Tardis regresses her to infancy, allowing the Doctor to dodge the messy business of being a second-hand executioner. All the questions raised by the episode, weak as they are, are dropped by way of a convenient magic trick; the Doctor doesn't have to make the critical decision, and doesn't have to resolve the issue at all.

The Slitheen's actual plot to destroy the world is little more than an afterthought, and so the highlight of the story becomes the Mickey/Rose sequence. Admirably acted and ably scripted, the scenes allow Mickey to grow beyond his two-dimensional role as the jealous ex, and show Rose showing some regret for what she's left behind in embracing the Doctor's lifestyle. It's rather sad, then, that the best use of the Mickey character - and his best send-off - appears after the series has already said goodbye to him twice before, and before yet another "final" appearance in "Parting of the Ways." You can't actually miss someone - or take seriously the prospect of missing someone - if they won't go away.

As a final note: Rose happens to tell Mickey about a number of fantastic alien worlds she and the Doctor have been popping off to between broadcast episodes. Given that every episode of this series so far has taken place in London, a space station, Cardiff, London, London, a bunker, a space station, London, London, London, and now Cardiff - to be followed by a closing two-parter on a space station - it's a bit of a kick in the head to be told that all this time our heroes have been bopping off to exotic locales and rubbing elbows with strange and alien creatures we'll never get to see. An open message to Russell T. Davies: I do not care what the planet looks like. I do not care if you shoot it in a quarry, I do not care if the aliens are stagehands wearing rolled-up carpet. Doctor Who travels in time and SPACE. AND SPACE. One more romp through a diner in present-day Wales with Rose's ex-boyfriend and I will send large men in ape suits to beat you with plastic plunger-guns.

There’s a select band of Doctor Who stories often mentioned by fans as being the ones they do or would use to convince sceptical friends and family of just how good this silly little series we know and love so well can really be. The likes of City of Death, The Caves of Androzani and so on and so forth. Now the new series has produced such a story, one that makes you really proud of the programme and must surely remind even the most jaded of fans of what they love about it. Yes, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances looks set to become that most wonderful of things, a bona fide Doctor Who ‘classic’.

With so much so good about this story, the real question when writing a review is where to start? Well, the thinking has long been that a Doctor Who story can only ever be as good as its script, and there’s no doubting that Steven Moffat has produced what must be one of the most accomplished efforts of the new series to date, and the series as a whole of all time. Anybody familiar with his work on the sitcom Coupling – particularly episodes such as the season two finale The End of the Line – will know just how adept Moffat is at plotting, threading together all the strands of a complex story. The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances is not an overly complex affair, but it is superbly structured.

From the explanation of why the three disparate alien elements – the TARDIS crew, Jack and the Chular ambulance – have all descended upon Blitz-torn 1941 London, to the explanation of what has happened to the eponymous child and its fellow gas mask-laden victims, to the child’s connection with Nancy and the ultimate resolution of the plot, it all works perfectly. Nothing it made too obvious or too subtle, and nothing is left dangling – it’s all wonderfully controlled and laid out at a well-pitched pace, it’s almost like a model of how to construct good television drama and superb Doctor Who.

Plotting is not the only string to Moffat’s bow, however, not by a long shot. The Ninth Doctor has probably never been better than he is here uttering Moffat’s lines – of particular note is the beginning of the second episode, as the Doctor and Jack converse about guns and bananas. “A good source of potassium!” indeed! At times it feels like classic Tom Baker era-stuff, although Eccleston also does things it’s hard to imagine the Fourth Doctor doing, such as his sheer joy at the end when he realises the problem has been solved and “everybody lives!” This Doctor has been through so much that his delight at the way everything has come together is particularly infectious, and once again he’s the brave, happy, heroic adventurer we’d all love to travel with, which it has to be said he hasn’t always been at times this season. Moffat also gives a knowing wink to the suddenly all-purpose sonic screwdriver – “Setting 2428!” – and creates possibly the first instance in the entire history of the series of the time honoured “Doctor who?” gag being used and not being embarrassing or annoying.

Interestingly, this handling of the Doctor leaves Rose at times, particularly in the first episode, slipping back more into the traditional companion role than ever before, although this isn’t a complaint. It’s nice to see her taken down a peg or two, namely by being left dangling from a barrage balloon hanging over London! She does get more into her typical Rose style as the story progresses, however, and her teasing of the Doctor over his dancing abilities. Of course, she also manages to swoon into the arms of the story’s leading guest star, and new companion, Captain Jack Harkness, excellently played by John Barrowman. Having only ever experienced Barrowman before as a presenter of Live & Kicking on Saturday mornings a decade ago I wasn’t really sure quite what to expect from Captain Jack, but I absolutely loved him – charismatic and confident without ever seeming too irritatingly cocky or arrogant. He brings an interesting new dynamic to the TARDIS crew, and I’ll be extremely interested to see if he continues to be handled as well in the next three episodes of the series, with Russell T Davies this time feeding him his lines.

Barrowman may have made an impact as Jack, but if awards were to be handed out for this episode then he’d have a hard fight for ‘best supporting character’ from Nancy, as wonderfully played by Florence Hoath. She’s a real discovery, and I hope that on the strength of her performance here Hoath goes a long way in the future. Nancy is part lovable cockney sparrow braving the Blitz, but there’s a lot more beneath the surface, shades of darkness as well as a world-weary kind of knowledge she seems too young for, and of course the secret eventually revealed by the Doctor at the end of the story. In fact, all of the child actors in the story deserve credit – Doctor Who doesn’t have a fantastic record with the performances of youngsters, but all of Nancy’s urchins were superb, and they never felt false or awkward, as is often the danger with putting young children on screen.

Mention too should go to Richard Wilson as the only other really notable turn in the story – he has a surprisingly small role, but he plays it excellently and gets to deliver one of the laugh-out-loud comedy lines at the end of the second episode, having had one of the most horrific moments in the first.

That blend of humour and darkness is this story in microcosm, really. Moffat’s background in television comedy means that some humour was probably to have been expected, but none of it is overly obvious or ever seems out of place. Indeed, the humour works well to contrast with the darkness present in much of the story. So for every scene of the Doctor becoming an unwitting stand-up comic, Jack wielding a banana or Constantine asking a patient if she’s sure she counted her legs properly, we have the oddness of the TARDIS phone ringing, the blank-faced ranks of the gas-masked zombies, and of course the haunting cries of ‘are you my mummy?’ There’s also a definite Quatermass tinge to proceedings with the influence being caused by a crashed spaceship in the heart of London, although the influence of Nigel Kneale’s serials over British television science-fiction is so great that it’s perhaps hard to tell whether such referencing is conscious or whether its simply bred into the psyche of enthusiasts of the genre in this country.

Yes, this story has the spookiest imagery we’ve seen so far in this series, and just as a generation of 1970s children seems to remember The Green Death as “the one with the giant maggots”, so the children of 2005 will probably grow up to speak nostalgically of “the one with the gas masks”. As well as being scripted as such, a lot of the literal darkness of the episode has to do with the highly accomplished direction of James Hawes, who shoots the thing like a feature film and has some delightfully noir-ish touches. My particular favourite shot was the pull-back from Jack’s cockpit through the open doors of the TARDIS into the console room to reveal that the Doctor and Rose had arrived to save him – a bit of a cheat in having the TARDIS land without the usual sound effect, but I’m more than willing to excuse that for the sake of such a nice piece of camerawork. Certainly, it’s good to know that Hawes will be returning to the series to helm the forthcoming Christmas special, at least.

The only instance where I felt Hawes did mis-step slightly was with the cliffhanger ending to episode one. While it was certainly much tighter and more effective that the conclusion to Aliens of London, it did still linger a little too long on the approaching menace. Similarly, Murray Gold’s incidentals – which fitted the action very well on the whole throughout the story, with some nicely atmospheric, suitably creepy moments – went all Rose on us during the cliffhanger recap in the second episode, for no apparent reason and completely against the mood of the story.

Aside from these very negligible points, however, the entire production team seems to have really pulled together to turn this story into something special. Set design, costume, lighting, and of course the wonderful effects from both Mike Tucker’s model team and the CGI specialists at The Mill… This is a perfect example if ever there was one of a massive group of people pulling together and giving their all to create a really special piece of television, reminding you of just how good this medium can be when it’s at its best.

The whole story is just so brilliantly made, written and acted that it’s impossible for all but the most churlish to find much more to criticise, I would think. And all the more intriguing for being a rare example of a Doctor Who story where there isn’t really a villain to speak of. The ending is uplifting and it really is nice to see the Doctor actually get to save everybody for a change, even the nobly self-sacrificing Jack. It’s so Jolly, the TARDIS team even get time for a nice little happy dance at the end, which despite seeming almost tacked-on and not part of the main story, works perfectly, and I wouldn’t have lost it for the world.

In short, this is wonderful, wonderful stuff. Doctor Who at its very best. If every other episode of the new series had been a complete disaster – which they haven’t been not by a long shot – then it still would have been worth bringing the show back for these two episodes alone. I already can’t wait for Moffat’s episode in season two, but for now I shall just have to content myself by going to watch the story again…

Piper’s leaving Doctor Who! So what? Is the current wave of media panic finally evidence of the companion’s superior cult status to the Doctor’s? Well, this never should have been the case anyway. Develop the character of a companion, fine, but not to that degree. As someone said recently somewhere among the mass of media publications touching on the subject, ‘companions come and go’. Well, yes, since Colin Baker, so do Doctors, admittedly, and we have that with Number Nine now too don’t we? Not that I’m all that bothered on that score either, as although Eccleston is a great and intense actor, and has shone sporadically in some recent episodes, he is in my mind not suited to the part of the Doctor, at least, certainly not in the way he has been directed to portray it. So, I’m not bothered about the Tardis crew being replaced. In fact, I think it can only be a good thing, especially given the untoward attentions rather unsubtly lavished by this current Doctor on his superficially attractive companion – and one hopes such tedious developments will be swiftly abandoned when Tenant is poised at the console, although this is unlikely given RTD’s obsession with ‘sexing up’ Doctor Who (predictions of a new leggy companion in short skirts doesn’t bode too well; not to mention a leggy Doctor in a kilt to boot!).

Onto this last two-parter. Well, overall it was pretty good wasn’t it? Visually well-realised, sufficiently (though not exceptionally) creepy and suspenseful (the child’s voice down the Tardis telephone; Dr Constantine morphing into a gas masked zombie) with some very original imagery (the eerie gas-masked child) and concepts (the gas masks welded to the skin of the bodies as if part of their anatomies) and nicely (though not exceptionally) directed. Though the shot of the monkey toy with the child’s voice coming through it was quite disturbing, as was the child trying to get into the house, overall this story did not unsettle quite as much as I had hoped (though as it is on at 7pm that’s probably fair enough) and I think what it lacked very slightly was the sort of subtle and almost dreamlike eeriness of old chillers like Sapphire and Steel, a series which achieved a surprisingly tense and dread-filled atmosphere considering it was very cheap and all on video camera, and one which is still palpable on viewing 25 years later (it played on our latent fears such as people without faces, photographs etc. and so in this vein, Empty Child has at least touched, albeit slickly, on this genre of ‘not showing but suggesting’). To be more germane: take the Gothic era atmos-gems such as Brain of Morbius, Pyramids of Mars, and in particular Seeds of Doom, Planet of Evil and Terror of the Zygons – those later two are genuinely chilling in places, and that’s a lot to do with that bleak, darkly-lit seventies style of direction. Then there’s the slightly more unsung post-Gothic chillers, Kinda and Snakedance; even aspects of Ghost Light. And what about that incredibly disturbing salvaged scene from Fury from the Deep? What a loss that is. Still, I suppose Empty Child/Doctor Dances has at least come a little nearer to suggesting the nightmarish than the other episodes so far, save Unquiet Dead, which is also on a par in this regard with the screaming zombie woman walking towards the camera (a classic shot).

Anyway, this story was as I say sufficiently creepy. The best thing about it though is its fully comprehensive, multi-layered, even slightly polemical (re the young girl being a single mother; the Doctor commenting on her communal altruism with the children as ‘either Marxism in action or…’; the Doctor citing the Welfare State at the end of story) storyline which is given a full explanation at the end which is truly unusual and quite inspired (and one in which the Doctor takes his true central place as a deductive character surrounded by less incisive compatriots). In this sense especially this is a true pseudo-historical in the old Hinchcliffe/Holmes sense of the word: alien intervention in Earth history causes seemingly supernatural occurrences. Moffatt has surprised me with a sharp, well-scripted and inventive script: surprised me because although Coupling could be very witty in places, essentially it was slightly elevated doggerel with vacuous gender stereotypes and unconvincing situations; a sort of post-modern Carry On for the Blairite era.

Aspects of the story which I dislike and find unnecessary however are symptomatic of this writer’s former TV output: namely preoccupation with sex to an almost juvenile degree. Not that the sexual semiotics of this story were juvenile as in Moffatt’s sit-com output. But the mere fact that they were so palpably present and indeed integral to the script of this story warrants some comment. Far from having ever really explored even the ins and outs of heterosexual relationships, Doctor Who, under the rather visceral and scatological direction of RTD, and in this story, by the pen of a similarly driven writer, has jumped light years ahead in its sexual didactics and is now quite openly examining bisexuality as manifest in a new companion, Captain Jack. I know kids of today are far more sexually literate than back in 1989, but isn’t this perhaps the least appropriate fictional scenario in which to investigate the increasingly public (though this is fine in society itself) heterogeneity of sexual preference? Or am I just old-fashioned? I don’t think so. The point is: what does this sexual sophistication add to a programme like Doctor Who? As far as I can see, nothing at all. It simply raises the question once again: just who exactly is RTD’s target audience? Seemingly not the under-12s. In that case then, add more drama, add more horror, and show it later in the evening. The Doctor alludes to Jack being a 51st century man in terms of tastes or ‘how he dances’ as the metaphor goes, but again this begs my other chief (rhetorical) question: So what? I just don’t care to be honest whether Jack has a fetish for Movellans in rubber! What’s this got to do with anything? It seems this new companion’s character is being defined solely on the basis of his bisexuality! Isn’t that a little bit…well…puerile? Not to mention arguably unsuited to a fantasy adventure programme. It seems RTD/Moffatt want to go one step further than the suggested incest in the old Star Wars films here. Lucas missed an obvious innuendo with Obi Wan-Kenobi showing Luke Skywalker his light saber!

I’m not going to hark on about this endlessly like some sort of TV Puritan, but again I felt this thread to the story was unnecessary and detracted from the inherent drama of it. What was especially unnecessary was Harkness’s implication that he knew the officer at the bombsite intimately and most ridiculously of all, the implication that the man with all the food in his house was ‘messing around with the butcher’. What seems to be irrational about the new Who universe is that far from just touching on the social reality of sexual diversity, which in itself and in the right context is fair enough, it seems to be going to the other extreme with implications that anything other than heterosexuality is the universal norm!!! Again I urge the producer to get the balance right here and not indulge in a frankly irrelevant fantasy based on his own sexuality which is arguably beginning to hint at a Homoerotic Who. What I’m saying is, unless it comes pertinently into a storyline, just jettison the sexual politics altogether! What partly made the series so fascinating before was the intellectually lifting feel to it, the inspiring otherworldliness, and the enigmatic androgynousness/sexlessness of the central character. I know the first great error was with the repeated kissing scene in the McGann film, but that’s not an excuse to open up the floodgates to a continual stream of sexual innuendo and metaphor in virtually every single storyline.

That all said, the strength of Empty Child’s storyline manages to still elevate it far above its writer’s/producer’s puzzling attempts to anchor it with sexual/romantic tension, and this is overall a satisfying and well-realised story with the best plot in the series yet. Stylistically and dramatically however I find Unquiet Dead and Dalek superior, and Father’s Day may still have a slight edge in terms of its refreshingly emotive take on the concept of time travel. I think the key point to end on here, and for all involved to remember, is that, ironically, the pivotal sublimity to Empty Child’s plot was indeed sexually pertinent and socially incisive in its subtext of the single unmarried mother pretending her son is her younger brother, for fear of social stigma. This then is a perfect example of how the nature of sexuality, if touched on in Who, should be done: as germane to the historical context and thus challenging, didactic and plot-enhancing. Moffatt made a profoundly good judgment here and this plot revelation at the end lifted the story’s conclusion to a higher, more thought-provoking level than the initial conclusion did in serving its own function as first twist; so we had this nice, socially polemical second twist. Very well done. Jack’s bisexuality can be partly vindicated in that it shows a massive contrast in the society of 51st century Earth to that of the mid-20th. But it could have just been very subtly hinted at, not so blatantly implied as it was. Suggestionism is the key. Let’s have more of that. Next week’s episode, judging by its absurdly unimaginative plot and return of farting aliens, obviously isn’t going to have any at all.

6/10.