I’ve read many reviews of New Earth, and while I will agree that there is much going on in the episode and it could use a few more minutes of exposition, much of the griping I see as a longing for the past format of the original series.

I say, ‘shut up and enjoy it!’ The “new” Doctor Who is all about rectifying the problems that the original series ran into beginning in the 1980s: taking itself far too seriously. While at times I wish that some of the stories had more depth, all in all they are great entertainment and have an absolutely wonderful feel to them. For the first time in Doctor Who television history one can actually relate to the characters. You can actually put yourself into the shoes of the characters and imagine what it would be like to be there, to feel and sense and be part of these adventures. Russell Davies has done a stupendous job of making Doctor Who fun again to the point where I find it hard sometimes to re-watch the original series due to the heavy-handedness and seriousness it sometimes took.

“New Earth” opponents have claimed that the story has too many ideas left unfulfilled and concepts that need more attention. Some say that the Cassandra body transfer concept needed more flushing out, or that the cat people should have been more thoroughly evolved as characters or the idea of the plague more expertly discussed. But why? That’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is that it is about renewal and humanity – with a dash of mystery as all good Doctor Who stories should be.

The story evokes the common themes of Doctor Who and the character of The Doctor: a love for life, a desire to understand and to explore. The ancillary concepts of the cat people and the virus were merely plot devices to help bring out those themes and having the Face of Boe around was to add some plausible mystery. None of this particularly bothered me as the themes came across clear as crystal and it was all great fun to watch! Great fun!

The original series would have spent the first 20 minutes explaining New Earth, the next 20 minutes with Cassandra and the body transfer, the following 20 minutes on the cat people and the disease and the final 20 minutes on the resolution. No doubt there would have been 40 minutes of unnecessary padding in that 80 minutes of television and the point of the story (renewal and love and enjoyment of life) would have become muddled in self-referential hubris and nonsense. Who needs that when a tightly written 45 minutes of fast paced action gets the message across just as clear with a very heart-warming ending where Cassandra bids goodbye to her future self in a scene one would never have expected from such a deliciously malevolent character.

New Earth is not without its flaws, but all in all, the core audience (which is not the old fanbase, but a 21st century cadre of smart young children) will find it wonderful fun with a solid message: life is important, life is beautiful and most of all, must be respected cherished and revered.

I'll warn you, dear reader, I'm not happy. My short review is that that New Earth was childish, camp and lazy. The long version follows...

First good bits: It looked good most of the time. Billy and David are exceptionally good at what they do though neither of them made me laugh. (It's too early in the series to be trying comedy with the leads). The themes of clinicians' scientific detachment from patients in need of emotional contact were interesting (though virtually unexplored). The end was quite imaginitive.

Now my quibbles really begin...

Bipedal Cats as medical nuns is a very strange idea. It's a bit pantomimey, a bit simple and a bit easy. You could imagine them as incidental characters in a children's book populated by dog firemen and Duck taxi-drivers. However they're weird and outlandish enough to be really fantastic sci-fi/fantasy creations- but only if they are more than just nurses with cat faces. For some reason I'd expected some kind of interesting and imaginitive explanation for their existence- something a bit clever or a bit mysterious or maybe a bit allegorical. But no- they were just there. They are there ONLY because they're a bit weird and might look good- nothing to do with plot, nothing with any reason or thought behind it.

This is a bit symptomatic of this episode and RTD's Doctor Who writing in general. This is such a shame as he can be so good when he's on form- by the time we'd got to 'The Parting of the Ways' I'd completely fogotten how much I'd cringed at the burping bin and fart-driven plots in last year's series. The brilliant character work in the script and in the perfomances shone so brightly I'd completely forgotten everything that was awful. Whoops.

New Earth did have some good moments and ideas- the ending focussing on Cassandra was a lovely idea and could have been moving if it wasn't completely unbelievable given what we seen up to then. In fact the episode teemed with characters and themes that were supposed to be heart-wrenchinlgy profound but came across as vapid and camp...

The hordes of imprisoned disease-carriers were supposed to be so heart-breaking having spent their existence craving human contact and suffering from every disease possible. But the groups of pleading and beckoning extras looked awful- the performances were laughable. If you'd turned on half way through you might think it was a quirky comedy sketch show. Perhaps a Doctor Who spoof? And then one of them cuddles up to David Tennant after he's cured them with an unbelievably childish plot device.

It's as though RTD is saying all that matters is you have people who look needy and pathetic, they get sprayed with magic by the Doctor and are fixed so then we think the Doctor is wonderful. There- That's drama. Tick. It really seems as though he doesn't think anything else in the script matters and he can slip in the simplest and most childish explanation for anything and get away with it because somewhere there's some camp sparkling dialogue.

My real problem with this is that a very similar thing was going on in Steven Moffat's WWII two-parter last year where Christopher Eccleston showered broken people with what was effectively fairy dust for non-scifi fans but there was SO MUCH MORE going on behind it. The nano-gene premise, the issues of motherhood and guilt in the social context of 1940s Britain, the themes of redemption and forgiveness an these being what brings about change in a scene with amazing semi-religious imagery but an intelligent explanation about DNA hierarchies and re-programming the fairy-dust. How can you go from something that good to New Earth?

The previews of next week (and the big stretch of guest writers' episodes following it) look really good and there are some writers that we know produce brilliant scripts. I was looking forward to this series SO MUCH and I'm hoping that there's some truly wonderful Doctor Who coming out way.

Like some other fans, knowing this was written by RTD did little for my pre-broadcast expectations. But I bore it in mind that the Christmas Invasion suggested that RTD had, perhaps, listened and learned.

New Earth shows that RTD has learned a lot. My only criticism of this story is that it would have been better had it been longer. The tension could have built up, the secrets kept a little longer if it had been in the older format of three 25 minute installments. But in modern TV we probably can't have that so let's deal with what we do have.

Some of the ideas here are straight out of 70's Doctor Who...the Doctor and his companion visit a place that is apparently a benevolant hospital in a happy city, where cures for terrible diseases have been found and are routinely administered to patients who would otherwise die. But we find something is wrong, and not what it seems. That is central to "old style" Doctor Who, but RTD has cleverly made it all seem so contemporary.

We also have Cassandra, who has survived "The End Of The World" along with a servant, and is hiding in the basement of the mysterious hospital. She too wants to know what's so sinister and secret about the intensive care section. Crucially she is used as a character essential to the plot, not merely returning to guarantee ratings. And we learn more about her, fleshing out her character and even allowing some sympathy.

I won't give any more plot details away, but I will say it seemed illogical that Cassandra initially needed a machine to transfer herself into Rose's brain...but thereafter could move from person to person at will. This seemed silly at first, but served a great purpose later in the story.

Thankfully there is no deus ex machina ending. The Doctor himself (with help from Casandra, in Rose's body) saves the day. It may seem an all too simple solution but no more so than previous Doctor Who stories. Again, more time would have allowed for greater explanation. Nonetheless it was exciting.

So we have a good story, with Billie Piper putting in perhaps her best performance to date. Tennant is settling nicely into the role. The story, while quite contemporary in many ways, could have been acted just as successfully by Trouhgton or Tom Baker.

I thought all the ships flying overhead in the opening scenes were too much, amost FX for FX sake, but otherwise the visuals were of a high standard. Incidental music generally added to the atmosphere and was appropriate to the pacing of the direction.

Not one of the very best, but highly enjoyable and one I shall watch again. If this is the benchmark standard then we have a fantastic season to look forward to. My personal rating, 7.5/10

And so it finally arrives, the first episode of the second season of the brand new Doctor Who, something which only three years ago would have seemed unthinkable. It has been a hell of a year and I sometimes have trouble reconciling the fact that the Doctor Who I have known for the last twenty years, a guilty pleasure to be confessed to at your peril, the pillar of ridicule by tv and sci fi pundits and a series that has had to claw its way every last inch back to tv, is now gasp, the height of critical and commercial success. In short I should be doing cartwheels that twenty years of unswerving devotion has been paid off, many would say a Who fan has never had it so good. Unfortunately last year also brought the sobering revelation that this new series of Doctor Who was not produced as many would have hoped as a serious sci fi show that would take its rightful place alongside Star Trek, Babylon 5 etc, but as a piece of 2005 entertainment for kids designed squarely to sit alongside the playstation, Yu Gi Oh cards and the likes of Ant and Dec. That it has been such a sterling success goes to prove that Russell T Davies probably knows a lot more about popular tv than I will ever do, so I have become reconciled to the fact that I am going to have to agree to differ over this new series, many love it unconditionally, while I still remain uncomfortably sat on the fence being entertained and irritated in almost equal measure.

As a semi sequel to The End of the World, New Earth carried much of the same strengths and faults of the earlier story. The story once again boasted a superbly realised futuristic enviroment which was on a par with a lot of stuff offered in recent feature films, I can only take my hat off to the BBC for the slick look that they have given Doctor Who, which holds court with most of the modern US series. When one thinks about the cheapness of shows such as Neverwhere only 10 years ago, it is remarkable how far things have come. The location more than anything last year evoked the classic Doctor Who setup of something sinister going on under the surface, and with the enigmatic cat like nuns and some weird patients, I thought the story was going to be something pretty special. Unfortunately as was often the case last year, for me the story was marred by far too much camp silliness. The bodyswapping, the rather camp and annoying character of Chip, and various other quips and gags, placed the series once again as a show seemingly targeted at the very young. Many I am sure would disagree, but I still don’t think the humour drama balance is quite right, The Christmas Invasion seemed to be heading in the right direction, but once again the tomfoolery prevalent in this episode sat uncomfortably with the rather bleak nature of the underlying story.

The opening teaser got the story off to a rollicking start, and one could almost sense the anticipation as Rose and the Doctor once again set off into the great beyond. From the opening moments David Tennant filled the shoes of the Doctor effortlessly. While appreciating a lot of what Christopher Eccleston did with the character, at times he seemed to be struggling and when he went off mark he went off badly, sometimes creating a character that was scarcely recognisable as the Doctor. In contrast David Tennant strode through the whole story completely at ease, never for one minute having to try and convince the audience he is the Doctor. As yet he hasn’t had a really great standout script, but on the evidence of the Christmas Invasion and this episode I think the part is in safe hands and I think some of the stuff to come will give him a chance to really shine. Only in the possessed Cassandra scenes did he slightly lose credibility, but probably did the best anybody could with this material.

Billie Piper in contrast seemed somewhat weaker in this episode than usual. Probably because much of the episode was given over to her being possessed by Cassandra, Rose got very few standout moments in her own right.

The return of Cassandra herself was somewhat of a mixed blessing, she was one of the few genuinely amusing camp comic creations from the last series, and her few scenes in her trampoline form where a joy to behold, unfortunately the whole bodyswap idea became very tiresome as it went on and once again seemed to be too much of a divergence from the main thread of the story. The Face of Boe’s return seemed a deliberate setup for a future plot strand, but I for one was glad to see him back. He is without doubt a superbly realised alien creation and it is just a shame he wasn’t given a bit more to do, series 1 had a few false starts on the monster front (I wont mention the Slitheen) but we now seeming to be getting some pretty good and believable aliens, and the Sisters of Plenitude easily put the cheetah people from Survival to shame.

The basic premise of the plague farm and the birth of a new breed of humans was an interesting one, there seemed to be a real good germ of an idea somewhere underneath it all, but it never quite sprouted. Drowned under the frenetic pace and the constant cutting about from one idea and place to another, the poignancy of the message the story seemed to be trying to make about the nature of life and death was lost. This is where I get the notion that Russell T Davies thinks the whole country suffers from attention deficit disorder, he seems so frightened at the notion that the viewer may become bored or turn over to the other side, that there has to be new joke, special effect or big moment every few seconds. While I agree with a lot of his perceptions, it is this worry that is preventing the new series from having many well plotted involving stories. It more often than not feels like we are watching the edited highlights, there is never any chance to build up a sense of mystery, characters such as the Duke are introduced and then dispensed with as the story flits between disparate elements in an attempt to keep the viewer watching. If I am honest I get the impression Russell T Davies concocts his stories a bit like Terrance Dicks said he had to do on the five Doctors, he has a list of ingredients and big set piece moments and the rest is a case of joining up the dots, one very rarely gets the sense of a clear progression from point A to point B. Again Mr Davies probably knows more about modern tv than I do, but this approach is why we have never had a modern equivalent of Genesis of the Daleks or Inferno, these stories grew organically from their respective ideas, gradual unravelling plots not afraid to have a quiet moment or two, one didn’t feel the writers were checking off a list of crowd pleasing ingredients as they went along.

So a somewhat mixed start to the new series: a very confident turn from Tennant in his first full story, a basic solid Doctor Who setup with a great looking location, a good story idea and some interesting characters, all of which unfortunately failed to gell into a cohesive whole, and sprinkled with too much of a camp sugary overcoat to be the standout start to the series it could have been.

The episode starts with a scene on the Powell Estate where Rose and the Doctor are saying goodbye to Jackie and Mickey. This would not be important, but it shows that the programme is still "grounded" in every day life. Although we may be visiting the year 5,000,000,000,023, where the grass smells of apples and the people fly about on hover cars, we don't forget that we have just left a very real council estate, where people have very real concerns about whether the washing is done, who will cook the chips and beans, and of course, where their teenage daughter is. This makes us care more about the characters, they are real people, not elements from a computer game or characters generated by the roll of dice. Mickey also elicits some sympathy as his "I love you" isn't reciprocated by Rose.

The theme music used is the re-vamped Christmas Invasion version, with its added orchestral parts and brief sound effects at the beginning. This therefore, must be David Tennant's version of the theme music. The CGI and/or model work (you can't tell what's what these days) is astonishing, whether it is the futuristic city of New New York, or the thousands of 'Tomb of The Cybermen'-like chambers, the perspective, lighting, and focus is all rendered perfectly. We can become blasй about effects we've seen before - We know they can 'do' Cassandra, so when we see her now we aren't gazing in wonder at the effect, we're listening to what she say, but it's still well done, however they do it. I had wondered whether she would have survived in a different form, having been left with just a brain at the end of her last appearance, but even though this might make logical sense, it is dramatically much better for us to see the "bitchy trampoline", so that we (and especially younger viewers) can realise that this is the same character returning.

The shape of this season seems similar to the last, if, that is, we take The Christmas Invasion as the first episode of the new series. If That was the debut episode, full of fast thrills and excitement, and then this is the comedy counterpart of the End Of The World, complete with two returning characters. The following episode is the historical story, etc., etc. But on to the returning characters. It is reassuring to see The Face Of Boe make another appearance, given how much he was spoken about in the last series, much anticipation has been built up. Here he is voiced by Chandler & Co.'s Struan Rodger (he played Barbara Flynn's husband) and he lends a dignified, unpretentious gravitas to the part. He has a final secret which he won't reveal until he and the Doctor meet for the third and last time. I only hope that that next time we see a bit more of him, because he's a great character and well-realised by both the actor and Neill Gorton's visual effect. The other 'plus' this gives the story is that there is an unanswered question; a Bad Wolf-style mini story arc, likely to run through the series. Like the inclusion of Cassandra, and the fact that the story follows on from The End Of The World, this rewards loyal viewers, but is not intrusive as to deter casual viewers (they may even be tempted into watching further episodes to find out the Face's secret).

David Tennant and Billie Piper both perform well, with the latter having a lot of comedy work to do, especially in the scenes where she is playing Cassandra. At times, the comedy and innuendo gets a little out of control, and this is perhaps evidence of a very confident production team. This undermines the realism in a couple of areas, mainly to do with the mind-transfer machine. A staple of science-fiction (having been used in Doctor Who several times before, but to better effect in The Prisoner), mind transfer machines are sometimes used as an excuse for actors to give OTT performances, and David Tennant probably oversteps the mark here. Tennant is his jolly self throughout most of the story, but does get a small chunk of steely moralising near the end of the episode, showing that his character probably has more dimensions than we have seen so far. He seems more mercurial than the ninth Doctor, and the fact that we have lost such a great Doctor as Christopher Eccleston makes it even more remarkable that Tennant has succeeded so well in stepping into his shoes. As for the supporting characters, Zoл Wannamaker makes the most of her limited screen time, even appearing as a beautiful, younger Cassandra in a couple of sequences, and I hope we see her again in whatever form. Her acolyte, Chip, is played with imagination by Sean Gallagher and again it would be a shame if we don't see him again. The cat nuns' facial expressions are all but hidden by their masks, but they have some good vocal performances, with Brothers and Sisters' Dona Croll appropriately playing a sister!

The cat nuns were very well realised. When you compare the effort that went into making them with the equal effort that went into 1989's cheetah people, and then see how much better 2006's results are, it gives a good if a of how technology has marched on in the last 17 years. If, presumably, they are a race of people and only some of them work as nuns/nurses, then it would be nice to see more of them in future stories. They were especially popular with my four year old, who was a little sad when the "naughty cat" fell down the lift shaft! That brings me to the most shocking aspect of this story; the make-up design used for the various visible ailments on the 'human guinea pigs' was almost unnecessarily realistic and I know older children (and adults!) who were also a bit distressed by this. That said, at least it was convincing, and when the visible skin complaints were seen to be healed, this acted as a reassurance to younger viewers. Having said that, I am not sure exactly how the medicines would have healed scarred skins so quickly, and why did just eight bags of coloured liquids cure thousands of disease when they're supposed to be taken intravenously anyway? But I digress and I nitpick. This was a great 'funny episode', and Doctor Who has to be able to laugh occasionally (nobody likes a sci-fi series which takes itself too seriously). And despite the comedy, there were serious moments, and quite a touching ending (which I won't reveal!). Altogether, this gets eight out of ten, and I can't wait for next Saturday to come round!

Doctor Who has had its fair share of poor season openers over the years, but fortunately New Earth will not be remembered as one of them. The episode featured an enjoyable story, some good set pieces, and high quality acting and was visually colourful and brilliant. Some plot elements may not have been that original (i.e. the living dead, murderous goings on at a hospital and body swaps), but these elements – along with a few twists – were made interesting enough to keep the show entertaining for 45 minutes. The Face of Boe storyline was also clever as it hints at something interesting to come in the future, which should keep viewers watching.

The highlight among a series of good performances was undoubtedly Billie Piper’s portrayal of the Cassandra possessed Rose, which was frighteningly like the Zoл Wannamaker original. David Tennant’s performance was also very encouraging. He looked comfortable in the role of a Tenth Doctor who seems more eccentric than his immediate predecessor. Yet, Doctor Ten is a complex character who can be just as passionate about injustice as his forebears as his reactions to the Sister’s treatment of their ‘patients’ in ‘intensive care’ showed. The episode also proved the ‘new new Doctor’ is funny and retains the traditional mix of serious and humorous personality traits that have made the character so endurable. Tennant did well to so convincingly convey such a rounded character in his full adventure.

The design and effects work in the story must rank as some of the best in Doctor Who history. The futuristic landscape looked really impressive and showed a lot of imagination and creative talent. The Sisters were also well realised and it is clear that a lot of time and effort went into creating them. The make up used on the disease victims was very convincing and they looked like they were genuinely the victims of some horrific condition. It is also worth noting that the Face of Boe and Cassandra (the trampoline version) looked even better than they did last year. Even the music seemed to work well and fit in with the mood of the story. This is all indicative of the high production values established last season being raised even further.

All in all New Earth represents a solid start to the new season.