It was somehow appropriate that Rose was transmitted over the Easter weekend. Because of this timing I am staying at my parents house and therefore watched the first new Doctor Who series in over 15 years in the same location where I watched the old series for a decade, in my parents’ living room on a large Grundig telly. 

What of the episode itself? My first feeling was pretty much “my goodness, it is really here and now”. The first impression was that RTD’s Doctor Who isn’t quite like “classic” Who. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, the old series would not quite work on today’s audiences and even the biggest fan has to accept that. There were certainly scenes that were very much like traditional Doctor Who, and if the scene in Rose’s home felt out of place most of the rest seemed to fit.

Plot wise the only real problem I have is with the lack of explanation for “anti-plastic”. The Doctor produces it without telling us how he came by it or how it works, even some Baker or Pertwee technobabble would have been better than nothing. Otherwise, given that the story had to fit into 45 minutes the plot and script are pretty good. What we missed was any real build-up of tension, I would prefer to see more two parters in the future. It also appeared that the Doctor knew the problem and how to solve it before he arrived, something missing was the way in which he used to use logic to solve problems. But perhaps, with character introductions done with, we shall see some of that in later stories.

And what of the characters? Having seen some of Eccleston’s film work I thought him potentially a very good Doctor. He still seems to be settling into the role but shows bags of promise. I can imagine by the third or fourth episode he’ll have made the role his own even though there are echoes of his former incarnations in some of the phrases he uses and in his mood swings. One could identify Hartnell, Baker and Pertwee in there with a touch of Davison. Not bad at all! And Bille Piper’s Rose was better than I could have hoped. We have her in the role of cipher, a young woman who is there to ask the Doctor questions we are itching to ask. But we also have a bored, bright girl who yearns for excitement and seems to relish danger, and who has the common sense and strength to be able to get the Doctor out of scrapes when necessary.

Special effects were generally of a high standard, be they CGI or the Auton’s plastic heads and arms. I like the TARDIS interior (not sure about coral growing out of water though) but am lukewarm about the console. Incidental music seemed intrusive at times but I have to remind myself that this is early days. Small problems such as the music can always be addressed in future episodes and series – assuming we get another series next year!

I enjoyed “Rose”, though it has minor faults as a slice of Doctor Who it does succeed as modern family drama and did feel like Doctor Who at times. What of the people I watched with? Well as tradition demanded my mother gave up after five minutes announcing “this is crap” and went to wash the dishes. Bear in mind that she feels anything not a soap or game show is crap. My father (a fan since Hartnell) really enjoyed it and felt it to be some of the best television he’s seen in years as well as genuine Doctor Who. My Wife, who is American and who saw some 4th and 5th Doctor stories on PBS as a child, put down her crossword about 10 minutes in and seemed to enjoy the episode though she feels it doesn’t feel quite like the old series. She’s right, but I feel if she was excited enough to watch then hopefully so will other people who are not die-hard fans.

Over all a good start but perhaps not destined to be an all time favourite. The twin purposes of this episode were surely to keep old fans happy while introducing the whole concept of Doctor Who to a new audience who haven’t seen much of it. In my opinion it has achieved these aims and promises to be a springboard to exciting adventures. Will the viewing public agree? Only time will tell…

The new Doctor Who series so far demonstrates Hitchcock's adage that a good movie needs three things - a good script, a good script and a good script. Russell T Davies proves the point of course with his offering, but with the new Doctor Who you have the special effects, the costumes, the performances, the whole 'superior production values' too... and left feeling wanting more. This is entertaining stuff for anyone, it just so happens to be Dr Who.

Davies puts in gags that you would swear came from Douglas Adams - how the National Trust moves mountains, literally, to create a 'classic Earth' and he builds deep and meaningful relationships between characters with a single word. There is wonderful economy in his writing - the old series would have spent an entire episodes in what Davies can do simply by making the Doctor exhale!

On the downside, the Doctor's heroic rescue came straight out of the movie 'Galaxy Quest' - a hilarious Star Trek spoof movie. Davies ripping off a spoof of Star Trek? Well, genius steals and talent borrows and Davies almost gets away with it. Almost.

The Doctor sheds tears (for the first time?) on the subject of the fate of Gallifrey five billion years into the future - how this will pan out in the Doctor Who Universe remains to be seen, but it is about time we pushed things on here. Gallifrey (at least the bits run by the Time Lords) has always been to me a sort of 'Oxbridge in a Police State' planet. There's lots to be uncovered there.

With the Doctor's 11 regenerations now runnning out, how about 'The Guilty Secret of the Time Lords' that reveals the weakness that lead to their demise and the Doctor gaining an unlimited number of regenerations to keep the series going?

We see a human exploding - blood and bits everywhere - and we've got a 7pm timeslot for family viewing. At long last, someone, somewhere is going to complain about Doctor Who - as Dr Who writer Mark Gatiss expressed recently, we've got back that Dr Who 'Saturday feeling'!

On the evidence of this episode, the Americans just have to buy the series now. If BBC Wales and Russell T can keep this up we've got to be seeing plenty more where this came from. Christopher Eccleston would be advised to stay put!

As a longtime viewer who’s been involved with organized DW fandom since 1976, I have to admit to being a bit disappointed. I recognize that the show needs to appeal to contemporary audiences, that times have moved on, and that the 45 minute format necessitates different story structure to the old episodic one. Within these confines the show was acceptable. But it could have been so much better.

The main problem is it was too broadly comedic – it didn’t take itself seriously enough. Doctor Who has always had some comedy element, which peaked really with Tom Baker around season 17 (and went too far) – but at its heart it should be a drama. A lighthearted drama perhaps, but a drama nonetheless. The scene of the Doctor grappling with the Auton arm in Rose’s apartment was obviously played for comedy. So was the belching trash container. So was the Autonised Mickey. And there was too much of it. The show needs to take itself more seriously.

The script itself was also something of a letdown. Admittedly the first episode had a lot to achieve: reintroduce the Doctor, introduce Rose AND have a self contained “defeat the monster” plot. But it didn’t really succeed as it should have. It was fast-paced, but at the expense of character development. Russell T Davies has been emphasizing in interviews for the past 12 months how important it is for the new series to focus on character: so where was this focus? Despite the episode being titled ‘Rose’, we learnt virtually nothing about Rose’s character. We know she has a boyfriend and lives with her mum in a flat, we know she didn’t do well at school and once won a gymnastics medal. That’s it. That’s not character development. In contrast, the 45-minute Smallville pilot told us a helluva lot more about its regulars (and there are more of them!) while STILL telling a story.

The sequence with the internet geek who had a website on the Doctor could easily have been dropped from the story entirely with no consequence to the plot. It was a waste of space and seemed designed as an injoke, the geek a thinly (sic) disguised Ian Levine. The sole point seemed to set up the mystery of the Doctor, but this could have been far better achieved in a scene between the Doctor himself and Rose, preferably in the TARDIS – which didn’t get nearly enough attention. In contrast, the 1996 TVM with Paul McGann did much better at establishing the other worldliness of the TARDIS (by giving it more screentime). The whole internet geek thing seemed an excuse to introduce the net as a topical reference – labored.

I would have much preferred a simpler, lower key intro story (without the “foiling a major invasion” business, there simply wasn’t the time to treat this properly), with more emphasis on characterisation – more Doctor/Rose scenes.

On the plus side: the acting was fine. The FX were pretty good (a few were hokey, but that’s inevitable with the budget as is). The Doctor himself was, unfortunately, not quite alien enough. There were two nice bits: when he answered Rose’s question of who he was, and his obvious longing at the end for her to join him on his travels (which hearked back to Pertwee and Baker both of whom exhibited the same quality). But for the most part the Doctor was too damn human. It’s bad enough he is dressed to blend in rather than stand out, but his speech had too many contemporary colloquialisms and contractions – which he wouldn’t know unless he’d spent a lot of time hanging around contemporary London, and that’s out of character for him, he should be off exploring the universe. The Doctor is and always should be “the outsider”, the mystery: there was a hearkening to this at places, but there was not ENOUGH of it. He was too familiar and everyday.

The title sequence was wonderful, the new theme arrangement was wonderful, and I was relieved to see the character credited once again as ‘Doctor Who’ - crediting him as 'the Doctor' is too literalist, it loses both the poetry of the former credit as well as the link between the character and the name of the program! The Doctor he may be, but the credit should be and thankfully once more is ‘Doctor Who’ (? As in yes, it is a question!)

In summary: it was not a bad start, but it could have been better. The writing needs more depth, more characterisation. It doesn’t need to move at this breakneck speed ALL the time. The show can sustain both fast moving sequences AND more considered character-driven scenes, and the latter is what this first episode really lacked, and what it NEEDED. If the program is trying to compete with stuff like SMALLVILLE, it needs to go a long way to do it – cos that show is frankly (and as a committed DW fan I hate to say it) more entertaining.

Tuning in to the first episode of the BBC’s new Doctor Who series you may have been a little overwhelmed – I know I was. After the opening titles we hurtle from space down onto a CGI representation of Britain; we see a montage of shop girl Rose waking up, getting up, leaving home, working, eating; a speeded-up recording of London life flickers by. Music pumps noisily in the foreground all the while. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as it comes from the pen of the ebullient Russell T Davies, it is hyperactive television – bright, noisy, unfocussed and occasionally slightly incoherent. This is certainly Doctor Who for a new generation of kids: it is absolutely buzzing with e-numbers!

Yes, ‘Rose’, and probably any 1-part episode of 45-50 minutes’ duration, is too short to tell stories of Doctor Who’s traditional scale and length. Nevertheless, it makes sense and holds together as a story very well – but the only way for it to do this is to scrimp on the explanations. How did the Nestene Consciousness get there and get established under London? How did it know to copy Mickey and how did the real one get to its secret lair? How did the mannequins (never once referred to as Autons) get to all those different places – didn’t the Doctor blow them up? And how come they had guns inside, who made them?

Watching ‘Rose’ is a rewarding and fairly enjoyable experience, but very frustrating. Frustrating because it has been spoilered so heavily; frustrating because for every great scene (such as the Doctor’s confrontation with the Consciousness) there is a stupid one (the replica Mickey – and yes, I know it’s all a joke on how shallow his personality is anyway); frustrating because for every laugh-out-loud scene (Rose’s chav mother catching on about half a minute later than the other shoppers that the Autons are slaughtering everyone!) there is a crude and annoying one (such as that dustbin burping – it hasn’t got a digestive tract, for heaven’s sake!) And it is frustrating because actually, it is not the old Doctor Who that we all love, but something tantalisingly close to it.

Basically, ‘Rose’ is ‘alright’. Chris is alright, Billie is okay, the Autons are rather poor, the CGI is rather excellent, the guest cast are pretty good, the TARDIS is fine, the plot and humour are mostly great but sometimes dodgy. The atmosphere is non-existent. There were two bits that I absolutely loved; Mickey trying to look hard in his clapped-out yellow Beetle; and everything featuring Clive, an allegory of you and me (and a surprisingly flattering one when you consider Light and Bellboy!)

The Doctor himself can get rather lost in all this, which is unfortunate. Whether or not the uninitiated would be enthralled and hooked by this portrayal of the Doctor I honestly don’t know, as I can’t step outside myself enough to see. The idea is clearly that he has very recently regenerated, perhaps while in the course of setting his pre-existing plan to defeat the Autons in motion – perhaps the Eighth Doctor had a run-in with the Autonised managerial team of Henrik’s store? This explains his baffling mood swings, which are initially engaging and funny but become disconcerting. He is alternately nice and callous. If we assume that the former characteristic is the remnant of the Eighth Doctor’s personality slipping away (getting a bit fannish with the theorising here), then maybe the callousness is this Doctor’s true underlying persona beginning to coagulate? It can be rather shocking, particularly his lack of care for Rose’s boyfriend on the Embankment. And while the Seventh Doctor was hammily evil in an enjoyable way, even Tom Baker in his worst moods never actually seemed dangerous to his friends. 

Finally, Russell, in the TARDIS’ five-second sojourn towards the episode’s end, has generously and far-sightedly provided us with the first new series ‘gap’ for solo adventures, which the forthcoming novels and audios can exploit forever!!

Seven out of ten.

I was a bit disappointed this week after learning that Christopher Eccleston had quit as the Doctor and I was determined not to enjoy this episode. I surprised myself...this was surely the best episode of Doctor Who ever! From the teaser sequence opening inside the TARDIS to the fabulous new opening I realised the Doctor could survive without Eccleston. 

Platform One and its many inhabitants enthralled me. Gone are the days of rubber suited aliens. These aliens look almost real and put shows like the dull and insipid Enterprise to shame. Jabe is my favourite out of the lot; Yasmin Bannerman puts in a wonderful performance and her sexual chemistry with the Doctor was funny and interesting, seen as the Doctor hasn't been shown to have any interest in sex whatsoever in the past. The Doctor's shameless flirting doesn't come off as wrong and out of place; it fits in with his character. Their friendship is great to watch, and the Doctor's grief at her death is poignant.

There are some very interesting tit-bits about the Doctor's past that come up in this episode. Gallifrey has been destroyed! The Doctor is the last of his race! (Do the Daleks have anything to do with this I wonder...) I have a feeling we'll get to know why and I for one can't wait to find out. This type of innocent continuity between episodes will make the series that much more rewarding to watch. The Doctor, as a result of this, seems to become more of a tragic hero than before. We feel sorry for him. Christopher pulls this off brilliantly.

Next stop the story. Not exactly complicated, but it's a good mystery none-the-less, and seems to me to be a classic Who story; Doctor and companion in a confined setting with people getting killed. It works even better here because of one thing; the special effects are amazing. I always thought the effects were good on Stargate but here it's much more than that. The scene of Earth being destroyed; Rose trapped while the sun's rays tries to disintergrate her; the Platform One station; it's all good. Last weeks dodgy wheelie bin CGI effects are almost (but not quite) forgotten.

Good points: Zoe Wannamaker as Cassandra is a hoot. Totally evil and totally funny. I would like to see more of her, except she gets killed. And Rose reacted the way any normal person would at being confronted with so many weird aliens; she freaked out. That was a nice touch.

Bad points; the Doctor and Rose were separated quite a lot through the episode. This early on in their relationship it was a bad idea. And at the end of the episode I felt very emotional; Christopher Eccleston put in a flawless, solid performance. To me he IS the Doctor. It's just a shame his performance wasn't marred by the fact that he's leaving.

(Note: Yes, this is my real birth name! No relation to my namesake!)

At last the start of new Doctor Who! The wait is finally over! I loved the opening and closing themes and sequences. They were very similar to the classic series and yet noticeably updated.

For an introductory story Rose is quite good. It introduces the characters and situation at a manic pace and given the time constraints it needs to. Other "first" stories such as An Unearthly Child, Robot, The Twin Dilemma & Time and the Rani were not nearly as entertaining and they had twice the length of time to do so. That being said, I wish the story had been done in two parts because I feel it would have been even better if time had been given to flesh the characters and situation out more. I'm a little unsure if the one episode format is really the best choice but we'll see if the future episodes manage it a little better since they don't have the requirement of introducing the main characters.

The opening is presented in a very music video montage style which is typical of much of today's films and television, and yet it manages to actually convey the necessary information which is something that most films and tv shows fail to do when utilizing this style.

It's nice to see the Autons return along with the Nestene Consciousness. For old fans it was a nice nod and it was also a fine choice of returning foes which needed little back story to get new viewers up to speed.

Christopher Eccleston is a fine Doctor bringing many of the old familiar elements to the character as well as some of his own added quirks. I know some people are bothered by his grinning all the time, but I find it refreshing. It makes him seem more approachable than many of the other Doctors. I found his performance to be excellent.

Billie Piper was quite the pleasant surprise with her acting ability. She is also one of the most attractive companions ever and yet the producers have so far managed to avoid some of the sexism and helplessness attributed to most of the female companions of the past.

Noel Clarke was fine as Mickey and I especially liked his portrayal as an Auton. The only downside is that I could see many U.S. TV stations frowning upon having a minority character portrayed as flawed as he is. It could make it a tough sell over here in the states where we're really sensitive to negative portrayals of minority characters. On the plus side he was in a relationship with Rose which was very progressive for Doctor Who.

I also enjoyed Camille Coduri as Rose's mum. She reminded me of so many mothers I've known that it was an amazing job.

The special effects were great! Not as nice as the TV movie, but so much better than the old TV series! The only scene I didn't feel worked entirely was the trash bin scene. It looked too fake. Also the burp was a little too over the top. It was very humorous, but it felt really out of place with the rest of the atmosphere of the scene.

Most of the humor worked really well. I loved The Doctor wrestling with the Auton arm and many of the one liners. Again the only bit I felt didn't work was the trash bin scene.

The resolution was a bit rushed and the anti-plastic a bit convenient but I'm sure that was do to the new time constraints.

So overall, a fine start and a really nice episode. Really good performances, a nice mixture of humor and drama and the return of classic foes along with old friends. I have confidence that they will be able to smooth out the few rough spots. My main complaint would be the limited time to establish the plot and characters.