Ok, let's get the obvious out of the way. I liked it, it was good, well done! Now that that is said on with the review.

This episode for me was a big revelation, as it was for most viewers I'm sure. I do like the fact that we need to rediscovers everything about the Doctor Who universe once again with several twists and turns along the way. From the brief explanation of the TARDIS to the Doctor himself. I find this new Doctor to be, in some exagerated way, the most human of them all.

During the scene when he's talking to Rose and she's explaining that everyone is so 'alien', The Doctor goes from being gitty as a child in a candy store to expressing the deepest sadness when recalling his past. And later, around the end of the episode, he is even vengeful towards Cassandra and very dark. His emotions are continuously changing from one end of the spectrum to the other end.

The previous Doctors were very composed or at least uniform in how they acted and reacted. The ninth Doctor seems a bit unstable, human. It's as if to say the whole of human emotions were compacted into the Doctor and his body and mind can't seem to contain it all properly. I'm interested in finding out where will lead.

The other revelation was, of course, the fact that he is the last Timelord. Now, unless there is something I missed, please let me know if I did, I think I speak for everyone when I say: "What the heck happened?" There was a war? Against who? when did this happen? And a slew of other question that will most likely be answered during the course of the new series.

But here's a discrepancy about all this. If the Timelords and Gallifrey is destroyed and the war as lost, why can't The Doctor go back in time and prevent it? Why can't he go back in time to find other Timelords that travelled to such and such era and place before dying. In the realm of Time Travel it's all possible.

I think that this bit was the one real downside to the episode. I can only hope that an explanation will soon be given, otherwise I for one will not believe that the idea did not pop into either The Doctor's or Rose's head...

I could do my absolute best to consider Russell T Davies’ ‘Rose’ objectively, but that would be silly, and I would almost certainly meet with failure. I’m far too much in love with Doctor Who, or at least the idea of Doctor Who, to think about this as anything other than a new and special part of myself. So this can’t rightly be considered a ‘review’, since it’s impossible for me to separate myself from the thing in question. Instead, I’m obliged to tell my story.

For a start, I knew too much. A six-second trailer, and I had to go for a lie down. I’d already memorised the ‘falling through space’ sequence long before I had the opportunity to see it in context. And aside from not knowing precisely how the narrative would fit together, I pretty much knew what would happen, thanks to spoilers, speculation and the knowledge that the whole concept, and its associated iconography, had to be squeezed into forty-five minutes of screen time. The cynic in me would say that watching ‘Rose’ was merely a matter of joining the dots, so it’s fortunate I’ve decided to silence him.

What I’ve come to realise, over the fortnight preceding ‘Rose’, is how important the whole ethos of Doctor Who is to me. It’s hardly consistent, except perhaps in its ‘Britishness’, but the show’s multiple aspects – the horror of death, the secular sense of wonderment, the idea that one should ‘never be cruel or cowardly’, the desire to live your life in an interesting fashion – are what I’m working with here, in this life. It’s such a crucial part of my upbringing, I can’t imagine going forward without it.

So what’s important to me, and it’s the reason why the new series had me giggling to myself in the shower last week, is not that He’s coming back, but that He’s been away for so long. He hasn’t, of course, but suddenly it seems like that, because there’s a difference between reading Blood Heat on the train, and trying not to bend the spine of the book, and having the Doctor suddenly bounce into everyone’s lives, not just mine, every Saturday night. On television.

And that’s why it was so important that Davies and Billie Piper (and, to a lesser extent, Christopher Eccleston), got Rose right. She was at least as important as the Doctor, and thank Verity, she worked. A beautiful person leading a dreary life, and immediately the Doctor’s best friend. It’s necessary, I think, that the Doctor-friend (she’s no companion, and definitely not an assistant) dynamic has the suggestion of ‘fate’ scribbled on it somewhere, and that’s the episode’s first big success. The Doctor and Rose have a destiny together; that much was clear from the moment she dragged him playfully through the front door of the house. Rose’s TARDIS entrance is the flipside of the same coin, and played beautifully, as are her subsequent tears and the Doctor’s warm-yet-alien reassurance: ‘It’s OK.’

Attention to the wonderful Piper does Eccleston a massive disservice, of course. His awareness of what is required, and how much he can get away with, is masterful, and the Doctor of ‘Rose’ is a great stride forward for the character. His laughter with his new best friend and his dismissal of Mickey might seem too much like Russell T Davies ticking the boxes marked ‘human’ and ‘alien’ in his masterplan, but these are inevitable flaws for an episode with so much to do, and Eccleston has an unprecedented lightness of touch (unless you were witness to 2004’s Electricity).

Keith Boak’s job, it seems, was to make Doctor Who look like television drama for the twenty-first century, and this involves a corruption of sorts. ‘Rose’ was basically shiny and restless, leaping hyperactively from one jazzy shot to the next. This isn’t good for tension, and the Autons were not as scary as they might have been with a more patient approach to editing, but for the generation of kids we hope were watching, this might, sadly, have been necessary. Visually, ‘Rose’ was never less than interesting, even if there were often too much superficial goings-on, without the depth that would give the show a helpful suggestion of realism.

Murray Gold’s music suffered in exactly the same way, being incredibly ostentatious, and occasionally drowning out the dialogue. It was brash, too exciting for its own good, and incredibly appropriate. The episode had such a frenetic pace, it didn’t require such urgency in its incidental music, but it didn’t jar, because this is the kind of music video-style of television that we – and Doctor Who – are dealing with here. What’s true is that with a budget of millions, Doctor Who can’t yet risk being as downright weird as it once was. Hence the quasi-orchestral theme, relentless pace, and CGI. This is 2005, and the new Doctor Who is, in many ways, a child of the movies.

Thankfully, we’re still on a budget, and Rose having her face menaced by an amputated plastic arm is a fantastically cheap moment, superbly conceived. The hungry wheelie bin works less well, if only because of its ill-judged belch, and Noel Clarke’s obvious struggle with the illusory CGI. And the writing’s rooted in the great Doctor Who tradition of solving the problems of the universe by having a chat with a gooey blob on your doorstep. The difference between ‘Rose’ and ‘The Horror of Fang Rock’, which the climax pays homage to, is that this is so bloody loud, we can hardly hear the Doctor single-handedly conjuring up a whole new mythology for us to deal with. ‘I fought in the war!’ he screamed, and across the UK thousands of fans started to invent their own stories. This kind of half-explanation is exactly what Doctor Who’s so good at. It’s there in ‘An Unearthly Child’, Damaged Goods, and now ‘Rose’. This is just the beginning, and we can excuse the first show its lack of narrative substance. There just wasn’t enough time. Next week, it should slow down, and actually tell a story worth telling. As it stands, ‘Rose’ was the best trailer ever made. He’s come back to save the world, and yes yes yes, it needs saving.

Like last time (November 1963), the first episode contained an aerial view of Central London and I loved the way time was speeded up to show us a day in the life of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). 

The new series has now got that filmed look and it was very tense watching Rose approach the store basement surrounded by what we knew at first glance to be Autons. The cheer that greeted her from BBC3 actually added to the scene - as it seemed the plastic nasties were luring her into a surprise birthday party, horror film style. But I didn’t mistake a couple of brief snatches of Graham Norton. Ironic, because he was reported to have wanted a role in the new series, having trained as an actor. I trust whoever was responsible for the sound transference will be exterminated, though it didn’t spoil my enjoyment. How could it? Rose needed someone to rescue her and the way The Doctor just burst onto the scene - sideways into the story - hadn’t been done before and is effective. 

I thought Christopher Eccleston was eccentric and likeable. Russell T set the character up quickly and well. In seconds we had established from his checking out the ears that he’d just regenerated, could scan-read quicker than humans and was quick at social comment: “he’s gay, she’s an alien - it won’t work”. I also laughed when he confirmed to Rose’s mother, who had her eye on him, that he was a strange man. As to the Ninth Doctor’s outfit: it suits Eccleston. As velvet smoking jackets & long scarves suited Jon Pertwee & Tom Baker. One or two of the subsequent outfits had been OTT (what Russell T said about “layers of association” over the years...re the costumes, going one farther than something that had worked for a different actor) and I guess it had reached the point where it was considered one of the factors standing in the way of making DR. WHO accessible to a 21st Century audience. But Sylvester McCoy was actually the first Doctor to speak with a regional (non-RP) accent. 

It’s a good move to base DR. WHO on contemporary Earth in a domestic set-up, as it answers it’s critics on the question of social relevance and will hopefully attract a lot of new viewers. The use of London - red buses, Big Ben & LondonEye - is a good selling proposition for overseas sales. I sincerely hope a lot of the episodes start & end on present-day Earth as I’ve heard. Yet within that, historical stories & outer space will be present. There seems to be a deliberate contrast in the arrangement of the episodes.

I loved the lighting of the TARDIS in RADIO TIMES. A butterfly design in it’s lines from a distance - which is pretty appropriate as they metamorphose. I’m not sure about the new console so far. But I was taken with the slightly chunkier TARDIS exterior, which reminded me of the films - both of which have been on in the last week. The lights being full on is another neat idea that perhaps should have been used before. 

The Autons are perhaps my favourite monsters, so a re-imagining of the famous scene of them smashing their way out of shop windows to go slaughtering innocent members of the public scores top marks for me. The new Autons - the male business suit with lilac shirts, the Classic Brides, the Auton Children - absolutely brilliant and instantly iconic. The fact Mickey was recognisable to us as an Auton before Rose was an acceptable dramatic device. 

Fast paced, contemporary, witty & scary. This featured the best SFX I’ve seen on TV. This single episode certainly compared well with Hollywood. 

DR. WHO is back and, boy, he’s better than he’s been in years.

Well, I have to say that my enthusiasm fro this new series goes from strength to strength.

After an unexpected pre-credit sequence that was bound to hook the audience from the first second, we launch into the familiar but modern new open credits sequence and Murray Gold'd arrangement of the theme. Both of these have grown on me also since episode one and I do feel that they now really capture RTD's vision of Doctor Who.

And suddenly, here we are; transported 5 billion years into the future. A base known as Platform One where spectators can watch the world come to an firey end - boy! Does this series move fast!

I suppose that the downside of the episode was that the plot was a little thin on the ground even for 45 minutes: The basic premise was, in many ways, similar to the "Curse of Peladon", with an array of outlandish and fantastical lifeforms gathered together in one place (to watch the end of the world). One of these lifeforms, of course, is a murderer. But which one? The Doctor fulfils the Holmes/Poirot role of detective and the revelation of the murderer's identity is both fitting and ironic.

The acting was superb with Billie Piper playing Rose's sense of bewilderment and distress that the earth will eventually be destroyed with absolute emotional conviction. Also, Rose's handling of her situation as novice space/time traveller is continued to be dealt with in her performance - something that was often skated over in the old series.

Eccleston also, just gets better and better. There is also another revelation in this episode which came sooner in the series than I expected. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but Eccleston handles these scenes with a depth of restrained emotion that is rarely seen on any Film or TV show, making it all the more of a shame that he will be leaving the role so soon.

The other performances in the episode were a joy to watch also, particularly Yasmin Bannerman as Jabe who brought a quiet sensitivity to the role, plus her semi flirtatious relationship with the Doctor worked well. And a special mention also, to Zoe Wannamaker (who you could be forgiven for not recognising) as the self-obsessed Cassandra - a difficult role to pull off successfully, but she does it.

All in all a good bit of visual wonder, excitement and not a little poignancy. I'm loving this new Doctor Who more and more.

OK first things first, confession time. I am a backslidden Doctor Who fan. I only got 4 or 5 right on each round on the recent Mastermind. I had turned my back on all the books, animated and audio adventures that have followed since the end of the series. I watched and bought the film, but only because I felt I had to. I guess thinking about it, I had ‘buried’ Doctor Who in my head, and wanted to move on from it. For me the books, cds and paraphernalia were an unsatisfactory substitute, and just reinforced the sense of loss.

So during the lead-up to the new series I was worried - worried that they would a) produce something of quality but not Doctor Who at all or b) produce something laughably bad that would have Tom spinning in his armchair! Worried that it would be good but I would be unable to enjoy it as I was not 11 any more. And on top of that I was worried I was going to be so worried about it I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it even if it was good!

Given all of these misgivings and negativity, when I say that it was fantastic it’s high praise. Firstly the pace; it swept me along at such a speed that I didn't have time to stop and think. And it was pitched perfectly, at 8-12 yr olds like they said, but with one eye on adults so I was able to enjoy it despite my age.

In retrospect now the plot was a little thin and rushed. It seemed like no sooner had the aliens been introduced and their plan divulged than they had been defeated! But this was made up for by the йlan, verve and sheer sense of fun which covered the whole enterprise. It is acknowledged that every piece of created work gives you an insight into the soul of the creator. Well, this Doctor Who was the product of someone who loves life. And that’s what it should be. 

Monsters and all that. I didn’t expect to be scared or even impressed by the ‘monsters’, and I wasn't. The only monster in ANY sci-fi which has managed to scare me was the Alien. But really it was never about the monsters for me, but more the concept; being – or meeting – someone who is totally free to travel through time and space and the possibilities this throws up. (to give you a clue where I’m coming from, my favourite story is Warriors Gate – no monsters. I've never even been that keen on the Daleks!) The most effective part for me 'monster'-wise was the scene in the cafe when her boyfriend had been copied; I found him genuinely a bit creepy. But judging from the posts on the cbeebies website, kids found the Auton shop dummies scary so that’s OK!

Bits and bobs. Doesn’t the closing theme music end a bit abruptly? Clive – an interesting character thrown away too early. In response to those nit-pickers saying that how come Clive saw the Doctor in various eras when he had only just regenerated – those were places he is going to be! (mangled tenses). And Clive happens to live in the same area as Rose after she does an internet-wide search for ‘Doctor Who’ – what’s the chance of that?!

But these are just footling concerns. I really loved it and I can’t wait for the rest of the series. It’s like being 11 again!

"I give you the air from my lungs."

Three patterns between 'Rose' and 'The End of the World' occur to me. First is that each uses a mixture of a Hartnell and Pertwee story as a base- in the former, its their first appearances (obvious?) and in the latter 'The Ark' and 'The Curse of Peladon' (although 'Mission to the Unknown' would strike just as well). The second is the reference to the Titanic. The third is yet another reference-to wars the Doctor has an involvement in (or is the same war?). 

As for the story itself, we're heading to a small station with a lot of aliens involved-season 5 anyone? This suits me perfectly as they were always my favourite stories. The pre-credits sequence isn't a complete stranger to Doctor Who, but to see them so often will be a novelty. Still, its worked this time, so it shouldn't be a problem. The Doctors reference to he date is very sly humour that continues to work its way into the series. In fact, the Doctor s one of four characters here to have superb characterisation in many areas. Rose is once again played at a high level, with her questioning here decision and the Doctor in a way we understand. Jabe is both alien and connected to us in an emotional way, and the sequences between her and the Doctor are some of the best in the episode. The last member is the very wacky Cassandra with a very villainous performance (and thats before we find out hes the villain!). The other aliens are very interesting visually, and its a sham that they had so little to do, perhaps exposing flaws in the 45-minute format. A universal favourite appears to be the wonderful Face of Bo. The voice of the much-publicized Moxx of Balhoon however leaves a lot to be desired.

The visual effects are the key to the piece here, and they not only add to the story, but define it in such a wonderful way. The sequence of the earth being destroyed is a classic bit, and the fact that Rose comments that no-one saw it a the end only makes it more poignant and gripping. The station is a masterpiece, and is contending for best space model in Doctor Who. The spiders are also well realised. The other great effect is the turbines, and the climatic shot of the Doctors final crossing is acting and tension at its best. 

The final moments are both the best and worst of the episode. The good is the Doctor and Roses reaction to what has happened, with emotion and flair. The bad is the revelation that the Doctor has no home planet. It really is far too early in the series for continuity, so Russel is taking a huge gamble here. You cannot help but think that the desk he was using to write this had a copy of 'The Ancestor Cell' on it. What becomes of it? Obviously, time will tell.

Overall, the episode is superior to 'Rose' and definitely one of he best going ever. 'Rose' has a stronger rating for providing an excellent start, but this is a likely contest for crown of the season lies.