There’s something about Christopher Eccleston’s performance as the Doctor, which reminds me of Craig Kelly’s performance as gay ‘Doctor Who’ fan, Vince in Russell T. Davies’ TV drama ‘Queer as Folk’. It’s as if, on being granted the writing duties on the new series of ‘Doctor Who’, Davies outlined the character of The Doctor in Vince’s image – that is to say, Davies own image, as Vince is certainly Davies’ autobiographical cypher.

In ‘The End of the World’ Eccleston’s wide-eyed thrill seeking Doctor echos Vince in almost every way, right down to the accent and catchphrase (‘Fantastic!’) Clad in a black leather jacket with a buzz-cut crop and a female sidekick, who isn’t his girlfriend, as underlined in the exchange between Jabe (Yasmin Bannerman) and the Doctor, we have the Doctor written as a queer icon.

Cassandra O’Brien, the last human and villain of the week, is the perfect foil. She is the typical ‘Dynasty’ bitch taken to the Nth degree and realised as a piece of computer generated skin stretched across a metal frame, the casuality of too much plastic surgery. Zoe Wannamaker brings the character to life with camp hilarity, particularly with her strangled shrieks of “Moisturise me!” as she meets her end. One only wishes she had escaped to return another day, as the best ‘Doctor Who’ villains often do.

Credit must go to Euros Lyn’s direction, which reaches disaster movie heights in the closing fifteen minutes of the episode. Never has ‘Doctor Who’ looked so glorious. The scenes where The Doctor walks messiah-like through the revolving fans, intercut with Billie Piper’s Rose struggling to escape the sun’s rays were beautifully realised. It doesn’t matter that the storyline, on the whole, was somewhat thin; this is ‘Doctor Who’ as a collection of visual set pieces.

Eccleston continues to shine in the role, which make the news of his imminent departure from the programme seem like a great loss. Here is a Doctor you believe in, much more than any of his predecessors. Despite his goofy, almost schizoid performance (bopping to Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’) he brings an emotional gravitas to the role that works to elevate the programme away from its intended audience. Who said this was children’s TV? ‘Doctor Who’ has never been so adult.

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…

End of the World is undoubtedly unlike any episode of Doctor Who I have ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a few! Superb aliens, a tearful Doctor, one of the rudest jokes ever in to be heard in the series and a bit of Britney, all add up to one of the cleverest, hilarious and emotional episodes ever.

Some fans may find the outlandish nature of the episode too much to take. If this season has an "oddball" story, then this could be it. The woman who wrote to Points of View exclaiming disgust at the Doctor’s scene with Jackie Tyler in her bedroom was probably straight back on the phone when she heard Cassandra’s funniest line. I have to say it took me a second to register it and then my reaction was one of hilarious disbelief…

The sets were superb and any criticisms of the special effects for Rose should be quashed. The space effects, the Sun and the Earth exploding were absolutely superb and of a standard as high as any US TV series. The costumes and alien make-up were also exemplary, although it was a shame the Face of Boe and the Moxx of Balhoon didn’t really do much.

But it wasn’t a load of style and no substance. Eccleston and Piper have already established a warm and genuine relationship between the Doctor and Rose in their scenes together. No wonder the final scene is executive producer Julie Gardner’s favourite.

Two supporting characters that particularly stood out were Jasmin Bannerman as Jabe and Becky Armory as Raffalo. Just as Mark Benton did in Rose, Armory successfully portrayed a likeable and credible character in such a short space of time, that it was rather sad to see her killed off. 

Likewise Bannerman as the Tree Queen was also excellent. Her scenes with the Doctor were funny at first, again some fans may have baulked at the sight of her flirting at the Doctor. But later on, where she tells him she knows who he is, her performance was very sensitive and moving, effectively demonstrating that this version of Doctor Who is going to have an emotional depth as well as action and adventure. 

Although it was perhaps rather obvious that Cassandra was the villain, Wanamaker made the best of the very funny script and certainly helped to make the character memorable and enjoyable.

I have to say I am truly enjoying this new series (as are many friends and family who aren’t fans) but am left wondering how it can get any better?

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.

After the promising, but uneven 'Rose' I was hoping that 'The End of the World' would settle down and get onto more even keel. The trailer looked good, with Christopher Eccleston much less manic and more Doctor like than in the first episode. What we got was something even better than I could have imagined.

The plot was simple but effective, with the Doctor and Rose journeying to the Year 5 Billion to a space station where the galactic elite are gathering to witness the end of the world. Of course nothing is that simple and the Doctor and Rose are soon mixed up in a murderous plot that threatens them all. But that's not the meat of the episode. The real meat is of course is around the mystery of the Doctor.

The major revelation of the episode is the Doctor is now the 'last' of the Time Lords. The rest and Gallifrey having been destroyed by war, sometime in the Doctor's recent past. The evasiveness of the Doctor when Rose asks where he came from hints at something, a later conversation with one of the alien guests hints that its something bad and in the final scene the Doctor reveals to Rose what happen and its not good. All of these scenes are played wonderfully by Christopher Eccleston, from the grief to the melancholy, he nails it perfectly.

It's also clear that Eccleston could potentially be the best Doctor so far. He once again successfully integrates elements from the previous incarnations, while charting his own course. In the final scene where he utters that "everything has its time and everything dies", you could almost hear the words being uttered by Sylvester McCoy's Doctor in some New Adventure. It's a performance of genius and a shame that he won't be doing more after this season (and the rumored special).

But the real genius is that of Russell T Davies. It's now clear that his plan for reinventing Who is to take the elements from the old series that worked, clean them up for a new audience, while in the process jettisoning the festering swamp of continuity of that dogged the latter years. By getting rid of Gallifrey, he neatly and quickly gets rid of some of the worst of the baggage, gives the Doctor a new motive for traveling and taking a companion, while setting up some mystery for future episodes to explore. I'm sure that at some point we'll find out who took out Gallifrey (my money would be on the Daleks), but for now its a nice juicy dangler.

Of course nothing is perfect. As with the first episode Ecleston sometime plays the humor a little to clumsy, and can be a bit too manic at times. He needs to settle down a little and play it more subtly. Also I'm not sure that 45 minutes is the right length for the series. An extra 5 minutes would give a little room to breath as everything is a little breakneck when crammed into 45 minutes.

But these are all things that can be worked on. It's clear from this episode that the Doctor is well and truly back, and lets hope that the series can maintain this level of quality.

(ps: When I say the 'last' I mean until the Master shows up again)