Nine years of waiting, sixteen years of unfulfilled hope, twenty two years of fandom and it’s finally back. And how do I react to the first few minutes of new Who? Supremely hacked off!

But it wasn’t the new doctor that did it, oh no. It was that, after so much time waiting and praying, I was rewarded by an audio glitch that led to a baying crowd of Graham Norton fans invading my favourite show! Sadly I began watching ‘Rose’ having been wrong-footed from the off. Good thing I had recorded it really.

So what did I think second time through? I doubt there is enough space on the site to write it all down. One thing I did realise was that on my first viewing I was pre-disposed to distrust it. I suppose that it was the so-called fan gene that threw this dampener on things. After all, it couldn’t live up to my years of hoping and praying could it? Well it did. All I needed to do was to forget that I was a fan.

I found that I really enjoyed the contemporary new style of things. The rush about London as Rose lives her mundane working day was as refreshing and pleasing to me as great shows like Hustle (also back this week) have been. A couple of minutes into this first episode and we already know that Rose has a layabout mum, a job in a department store and a boyfriend that meets up with her in her lunch breaks. It’s the kind of speedy exposition that can be seen in the best of old Doctor Who and is absent in the worst of it. After all, why do we need so many episodes to find out that the Cybermen want to invade London? Get on with the popping out of the sewers by St. Pauls already! Many have wondered if the Doctor is suited to modern TV and I am glad to say that it is.

The plot, such as it is, seems superfluous to the introduction of the characters and the premise. Shop window dummies are coming to life at the behest of an alien invader. That’s it. No sinister plastics factory, no bearded man with a magical horsebox, just a vat of living plastic under the London Eye and a vague explanation involving a ‘Warp Shunt’. It is by far one of the shallowest evil schemes that we have ever seen in Doctor Who and you know what? I didn’t care. Okay it could have done with a little more time (the ‘invasion’ itself was over before it began and not particularly sinister for it) but I found myself forgiving this. I became swept up in what must be considered the main plot; Rose finding out about the Doctor.

This story dominates the proceedings and there are enough mysteries for newcomers to get through to make it quite rewarding. Seeing the story through Rose’s eyes is a great modern equivalent to Barbara and Ian following Susan Forman to Totters Lane those many moons ago. Indeed in many ways this story is better appreciated by new viewers than by us fans. A warning though; as a result it may seem somewhat flat and obvious to some. In fact I felt decidedly under-whelmed by the first reveal of the TARDIS interior because my fan bias. Try to look at it as a child may, however, and you’re less likely to feel short changed.

The writing really caught my attention. My first experience of the excellent Russell T. Davies writing ability was the superb (and deeply terrifying) Dark Season on CBBC. Mr. Eldridge, the peroxide blonde millionaire with a blinding white light exploding from behind his shades, was a villain straight out of the Doctor Who mould. With that memory alone etched into my mind I knew that he would put together something special. Oh, and he’s won an award or two.

So expectations were high and the script did not disappoint. Dialogue of this quality has rarely been seen in Doctor Who since Robert Holmes downed his pen for the last time. It had a confidence and believability in places that is quite beyond the stilted techno babble that was so often seen in the classic series. It felt natural and that’s very difficult to get right. The script was also very funny in places, the now infamous Heat quip being of particular merit as was Jackie telling Rose about her Greek friend getting compensation for being told she looked Greek. There was so much good stuff in there that it’s difficult to pick out a favourite but what really made the story for me was the Doctors eulogy on the world spinning through space. It purveyed so many things at once and was so well conceived that it must have been a joy to perform. Dialogue like this is the reason why we’re watching a new series of Doctor Who while Star Trek has come to its sad but timely conclusion.

Of course nothings perfect. Jackie seemed nothing more than a stereotype to me, comic relief where genuine affection between mother and daughter may have been better. At the end of the story Jackie is about to be mown down by three Auton brides and I actually felt sorrier for Clive’s family than I did her. The Auton Mickey’s glitching was unnecessary, the armless gag predictable and the “shunt off” quip more than a little naff. But faced with so much good writing the poorer stuff fades into the background and taken as a whole we’ve never had it so good.

Of course where is good writing without solid acting too shore it up? And this brings me to our protagonists. First up is Rose, played by ex teen pop pipstrel Billie Piper. I’ll go on record here to say that I predicted this casting right from the beginning. Many a time I waxed lyrical on the BBC’s forum about how good she would be and now I feel justified in my faith. Piper was radiant and solidly convincing as Rose Tyler, with just the right mix of Buffy-style sarcasm and adventure to make her unique as a companion. Indeed she almost single handily carried this first episode and that is no mean feat! She had subtlety in her acting that took it beyond a good performance and into a great one. Look at her face closely and watch her expressions to see what I mean. Bronze medal in gymnastics? You go girl!

And what of Ecclestone’s Doctor? Although the show was dangerously close to being stolen by Ms. Piper my attention was still drawn to the newest portrayal of our favourite Time Lord. Ecclestone has certainly confounded his critics by turning in a much cheerier performance than his track record has credited him with. This new Doctor struck me as being very childish, an outward gleefulness that only just covered a deeper fatigue, resignation and loneliness. It was definitely a many-faceted performance that went beyond many of his predecessors. Not even in the heyday of Tom Baker’s Doctor did we ever see more than one side of his character at a time and only by the Davison and McCoy eras did we scratch behind the surface and see something else.

Given to a lesser actor (and there is certainly an argument that McCoy didn’t quite pull it off) it may have been lost in the pomp and energy of the character. But Ecclestone is not a lesser actor. Given potentially disastrous lines like “they want to overthrow the human race and destroy you” he makes them solidly believable. He conveys this manic creature with an amount of energy that sweeps you along with him, at the same turning on a sixpence to confront you with a terrifying temper. “I am TALKING!” Yes sir. You are. Sorry.

Oh, and watch his face at the end when Rose doesn’t go with him. If that’s not the greatest piece of acting seen on TV this year I’ll eat my hat. You can literally see his heart break and he doesn’t say a word.

Moving to the production itself I felt that it was as glossy and polished as any modern TV has a right to be. All this fuss about not being filmed in High Definition really is crying over peanuts. The lighting was good, the style was fun and the sets flawless but the effects? Well I agree with a recent reviewer in the Guardian who commented that they are pre-built to look naff in ten years time. They are okay, a far improvement over the original series but you could still see the joins. The wheelie bin sequence was obvious green screen (the shadows give it away) and I’ve seen better lightning effects in my time (look at the Thames as the London Eye starts glowing. See something missing?). However unlike many I actually quite liked the Nestene itself and the descent from space was nice. I’ll chalk it up to first episode teething problems, I know the Mill can do better and I hope to see it as we go on.

So I'm not going to give this a perfect evaluation as there were problems in it that tarnished this first episode for me. The humour was dangerously close to overwhelming the danger that Doctor Who should be conveying to its sofa cowering audience. The arm attacking the Doctor was done for comedy when it could have been very creepy and the burp from the wheelie bin destroyed the realism of the scene preceding it. Ecclestone almost overdid his grinning when he leaves the flat and the invasion was far too short – did we see anyone actually die? Call me cynical but I didn’t feel any tension there at all. So all in all a solid first episode to build the new series on, if not the perfect Doctor Who story that it could have been.

Four out of five, Doctor.

Oh, and why do people see a plot hole in the Doctors appearances in time after a recent regeneration? Why can’t he travel to all those places after he has met up with Rose!? He has a time machine!!

Doctor Who is back. And it's fan-bloody-tastic.

Being a young'un (if you can call 20 'young') I've never before had the experience of sitting down to watch a brand new series of Who (I'm not counting the TV Movie because that wasn't a series and anyway I had to record it), so as a complete virgin to the wonders of new Who the whole experience made me a bit giddy. But giddy in a good way.

I've seen lots of old episodes of Doctor Who on video, from every era, and I have to agree with what RTD was saying in the 'New Dimension' documentary about each Doctor being relevant to his own specific time period. The ones that I watched were all relevant to the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the movie captured the essence of the 90s . . . and now we have Doctor Who for the 21st Century. It's new, it's different, but so are we and the series has evolved with us.

I love the new music. I know there have been comments about the lack of a face appearing in the title credits but for me that's a minor thing that was more of a mildly amusing recurring theme than a genuine mainstay of the series. Yes it was nice to have a face appearing to let you know who was starring but do we really need that? I love the time tunnel effects and the music has just enough of the original in to remind us that this is Who we're watching while adding a fantastic new spin. I particularly enjoyed the slightly orchestral feel of the later part of the title music.

The beginning of the episode was like nothing we've seen before. Fast-paced, choppy, you could be forgiven for thinking you're watching the beginning of the BBC's new drama series about the everyday life of a London girl - and that's perfect, because that's the point of Rose herself. She's an everyday London girl and this was the best way of introducing her. Being honest, I didn't at first warm to Billie simply because she had little to do in her first few scenes other than run around in a montage but by the time we had her walking down the dark corridors, I was beginning to see an actress who could quite easily become one of the industry's biggest stars.

Rose as a companion is intriguing. It's not the first time the makers of the series have claimed that the latest female companion will be 'on an equal footing with' the Doctor, but this time I get the sense that Rose will not go the way of most companions before her. She is a genuinely strong character and the very fact that she investigates the Doctor when she could quite easily just let it go makes me think that she is going to be as much a part of the action as the Doctor - someone particularly deserving of the title 'companion' rather than 'assistant'. I particularly enjoyed her 'gymnastics' quip towards the end of the episode and I couldn't help but heave a sigh of relief when she made the decision to leave her life behind and join the Doctor.

Now, for the Doctor himself.

If it's true that everyone has a Doctor, I think that the Ninth Doctor might be mine. I'm giving him time because I don't want to jump to any conclusions yet, but he is the deepest and most interesting Doctor I've ever seen and it's only been one episode. 

It's already been mentioned on here but I'll say it again, in Christopher Eccleston's performance there are hints, glimmerings, of all the Doctors that have gone before - an authoritarian streak worthy of Hartnell, the 'armless' quip that is pure Troughton, a willingness to become part of the action like Pertwee, an amiable silliness inherited from Tom Baker, a boyish excitement that speaks of Davison, a certain irritability under stress that could be Colin Baker, a mysteriousness that was brought to the fore by McCoy and the love and compassion that epitomised McGann's short reign. In short, this Doctor more than any before him is, as the Fifth Doctor said in 'The Five Doctors', the sum of his memories.

This Doctor is the most alien of all the Doctors. He is driven by a love of all life but as is shown by his apparent forgetfulness regarding Mickey he is also capable of seeing the big picture. The Eighth Doctor would most probably have been as concerned for Mickey as Rose but in this new incarnation he has accrued a sense of responsibility that forces him to look beyond individuals, as his somewhat startling speech to Rose reveals.

Chris's performance was extraordinary. He managed to take the Doctor from one end of the spectrum to the other in the space of a few minutes with incredible ease and the sense that this was all completely natural. I love his slight swagger and easy grin, and I love that without realising it he has become the Doctor I wanted him to be.

There have been complaints about the lack of a regeneration scene. Whatever. I really don't think it's necessary and anyway the point of the story is that we arrive halfway through. A regeneration scene would have been complicated to explain to any new fans and its absence allowed us to hurtle straight into the story. I'd also like to point out to those who have complained that this caused a plot hole with Clive's pictures of the Ninth Doctor: he's a time traveller. Just because the pictures were taken sometime in the past doesn't mean they've already happened. The pictures of the Ninth Doctor could just as easily have been taken in five years' time when he decides to pay the past a visit. Hole closed.

The interior of the TARDIS is gorgeous. The similiarity between the new look the Time Rotor and the Rotor from the TV Movie provided a continuity bridge and the walls are like a more detailed, less harsh version of the original. The console is a delight, made up of a mish-mash of bits and pieces that look as though they're held there by Blu-Tack and the organic, coral feel of the interior makes it a mysterious, gorgeous wonder.

With the new TARDIS we are returned to the idea that this is a battered old Type 40. The movie interior was gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but it turned the TARDIS into the Doctor's living room and the console was so pretty that it seemed perfect. The point is that the Doctor's TARDIS isn't perfect, and with the console that looks like it's a Blue Peter experiment that sense of age is perfectly portrayed. The gangways also bring us back to the idea that this is a 'ship' - as it was often referred to in the Hartnell years - and gives the impression that the TARDIS itself is alive, a point that has been made several times in the more recent slew of books, and a point that would be interesting to see portrayed in the series. I also particularly like that the Police Box doors are now actually a part of the interior decor, my personal favourite point being that there is actually an old-style telephone behind where one would be on a real Police Box.

The Autons were menacing but not particularly frightening but that might simply be because we have so much violence on TV now anyway that the idea of a walking mannequin just isn't that frightening to us. The Consciousness didn't particularly impress me as a villain but the references to the Doctor's part in the 'War' intrigued me enough that this didn't particularly matter.

And this is where I reach the point: this was the first episode in a brand new series. If it had been about the Daleks, or another more menacing creature all the focus would have been on them. Using the only mildly scary Autons and introducing the Consciousness so late meant that we had time to get to know this new Doctor and Rose, meant that we were able to sympathise with them by the end of the episode so that when the Doctor realised that he had failed and the Consciousness was going to destroy Earth, we felt his pain with him, so that when Rose managed to wrestle aside the Autons and destroy the Consciousness we raised a cheer for her bravery.

New Who? Fantastic. Old Who? Fantastic. They're all the same Who. But this Who's been regenerated and it's not done any harm at all.

What was it the Sixth Doctor said?

'Change, my dear. And it seems, not a moment too soon.'

Well, it's back... and it really is about bloody time. Worth the wait? Worthy of the hype? Was anything going to be? I'll start from the beginning...

The title sequence was everything it needed to be, and nothing more, but then why would you want a title sequence to be more than it needed to be? The visuals were stylish and in keeping with the shows traditions as well as injecting a little more pace to the proceedings from the outset. And I think this idea of urgency was behind the updated theme music also. Gone is the dum-da-dum-dum-da-dum, deemed not energetic enough, and we have in its place a swirling orchestra more indicative of our time and pace (yes, I mean pace). All in all then, I think a success. And no. I'm not going to start a picket line outside BBC HQ insisting the doctors face be re-instated in the titles, because I didn't miss it, personally.

Moving on then and we open with a whirlwind day in the life of Rose which does it's job in all of about a minute, which is good as there are only 45 of them to pack a story into these days. Before you know it Rose and the ghost of Graham Norton (a very fired BBC sound technician is crying into the bottom of a whiskey glass as I write this) are creeping down an ominous corridor before being pounced on by some mannequins under the control of an alien being and it's as if The Doctor had never been away. Up he pops to save the damson in distress with some pithy dialogue, a smile, a sonic screwdriver and a bomb that looks not an awful lot like a bomb, but it matters not a jot. In a slight departure from the ways of old what follows is the almighty exploding of the top floor of a building which actually does look like the almighty exploding of the top floor of a building.

Things move on, again wasting no time, to the introduction of the supporting cast. We meet Rose's gossip-prone and slightly tarty mother Jackie as well as Rose's big wet shrug of a boyfriend Mickey. And the script I'm happy to say doesn't reserve all the choice lines for The Doctor or Rose. special mention then for Jackie's "It's aged her, skin like an old bible" and of course the laugh out loud line about her neighbour who sued the council because someone said she looked Greek, "she was Greek but that's not the point". Up pops the doctor again and in a nod to us the knowing fans checks his reflection indicating that he has recently regenerated. "oh no!" I hear you cry, "continuity gaff, because later Clive shows pictures of him throughout history so he must have been around for a while". Sigh. I shall take a moment to dispel this myth. There is no continuity problem here. Why would you think these pictures of Clive's were necessarily taken before the doctor meets Rose? Think about it. Why not during or after his time with or Rose? Even whilst she'd nipped out of the Tardis to find a Ladies? There are so many explanations it doesn't bare dwelling on, which I realise I am doing, so I'll move on... You're always treading a fine line when you play the killer disembodied arm card, and although this may not be the most original, nor my favourite part of the episode, it isn't so cringe inducing it makes you want to change channel. Which is a stroke of luck. the "armless" quip may have been a quip too far. Before we get to the last supporting character Clive, we get to witness a little of both what I thought was good and questionable in Eccleston's performance. The Doctor and Rose take a stroll in a rare, more subdued, moment and rose steels the opportunity to quiz the Doctor on who he is. The questionable first then: I wasn't entirely sold on the manic smirking with which Eccleston's doctor at first replies to Rose's queries, however I get the impression this was something of a one-off, I hope I am right. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against the Tom Baker-esque broad smiles such as when he exclaims "fantastic" in front of the millennium eye, but in this walking sequence there was something demented about the smiling, ala plastic Mickey almost. The good: The falling through space speech, where Eccleston flexes his acting muscles and gives the cheek muscles a much needed rest. Anyhow, enough about performances for now. The character of Clive and the idea of using the internet to trace the doctor through history I thought was both intriguing and clever from the point of view of this being an introductory episode. I kind of liked that we didn't get bogged down in pictures of the doctor in previous incarnations for the same reason I liked that the doctor didn't harp on about his previous dealings with the Autons (in fact he didn't harp on about 'Autons' at all) because to the first time viewer all of this would only have been disengaging, had it been included it might only have smacked of self-indulgence.

While Russell T Davies is poking fun at the doctor who fan base (in a nice way, of course) we are treated to the sight of Mickey being devoured by an empty wheely bin, although, as my brother pointed out to me, quite why the owner puts his bin out for collection with nothing in it is beyond me. I remember when it was first leaked that Rose's boyfriend was to be eaten by a wheely bin thinking that it could turn out being an incredibly naff moment. In fact I was finding it difficult to think how they could successfully pull such a moment off without it seeming ridiculous. Then I though of a moment in Ghostbusters 2 when a bath tub comes to life and tries to eat a baby, and what made that scene was the animated bathtub, the elasticity of it, it looked like a living thing. Lo and behold, wheely bin success!! What in the old days would have been a bin with flapping lid at best, what we had here was a snarling, snapping, living bin monster that actually worked. Admittedly the animation at this point may have been a bit more Shrek than Star Wars (although, that said, there are some pretty ropey effects in Star Wars) but it did enough, and it was from this moment on I think I really started to believe in this new Doctor Who. And it burped. I'm not going to talk about the burp. Plastic Mickey with his constant and unnatural smirking (as opposed to Eccleston's. Only kidding. I liked him really) was the creepiest thing in this episode, and definitely brought the best out of actor Noel Clarke. Not sold on the effect when The Doctor shoots the cork into his head but it didn't bug me enough for me to dwell on it.

On to the obligatory companions first entrance of the Tardis. Nicely handled. And was that an intentional throw back to the old days when Mickey breaks through the suddenly not quite so metal-looking door? Seems strange to say this but I had imagined the new interior of the Tardis would be bigger, maybe it's those huge columns that close the space down. I like the design but I'm hoping it will not prove to be a one room Tardis.

The rest of the episode I will cover quite briefly, and it does, lets face it, pass by quite quickly anyway. I liked the doctors double take gag with the millennium eye, I liked that he tried to reason with the Nestene Consciousness and then expressed guilt over the destruction of it's world, I liked the consciousness itself as a special effect as did I the effect of the London Eye as a transmitter. Wasn't so sure about the lightning bolts in between though, but I feel guilty for even picking that nit. By the time the shop dummies actually started to wreak havoc over London unfortunately there wasn't enough time left in the episode for them to do an awful lot of damage. They just about managed to kill Clive (much to my dismay) but couldn't quite bump off Jackie (much to my dismay, although this was due to laziness more than anything else, her daughter was making speeches and all they had to do was pull the trigger, so to speak). Rose did a Tarzan impression, the anti-plastic um... anti-plasticked the Nestene and the roof started randomly exploding, as it does. Then came what I have to say was one of the finest examples of acting in Doctor Who that I can remember, when Rose initially turns down The Doctor's offer to accompany him and although he tries to hide it you can almost see his hearts break. Many a "awww" was heard in my living room, I can tell you.

Well, that about sums it up I think, good writing, good acting, good effects, good news! I wasn't even as upset by Murray Gold's music as some others were (although it was a bit loud at points). I'm going to reserve judgement on the 45 minute format until of few more episodes time, but I will say I think this first episode could have done to have been an hour. Also I must confess to not being a fan of the "next week..." segment of any show, including Doctor Who. That said, I can't wait for next week, and I'm especially looking forward to the first two parter where the writers will have been able to, dare I say it, pace themselves. 

One last time, look it's the Autons! (raucous applause)

The supreme rule of all great drama is "start small and build." The more fantastic and convention-breaking the drama, the more important I believe this rule is. If you're going to, for example, write a story about a girl being whisked by a tornado into a bonkers fantasy over-the-rainbow land, you must start out with her being very ordinary (yet appealing) and with her in her hum-drum ordinary world, or the general audience is never going to swallow the enormous gobstopper you've got coming for them later on. The previous attempt to restart "Doctor Who" in 1996 got this very muddled. I'm extremely happy to see that in 2005, the lesson has been learned and the new attempt is off to a great start.

In "Rose," what we have in many ways is a condensed and extremely updated version of "The Wizard of Oz," with Rose herself in the Dorothy role, and the Doctor of course being the Wizard figure (except he's authentic, unlike the Oz Wizard). "Oz" itself we haven't really got to yet... that yellow brick time vortex is yet to be travelled, and will no doubt be the point of the 12 episodes which will follow, but some of Oz's denizens did pay Rose and the Doctor a call in the familiar form (well, familiar to "Doctor Who" fans) of the Nestenes and their Autons, making at least their third attempt to take over the Earth.

If you see what the story's doing, introducing everyone to Rose, the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the sort of things the Doctor gets mixed up in, then yes, the story is predictable and may even seem thin. This is especially true if we make the mistake of comparing this story to the complexities of the stories we've been used to in the non-TV years from Big Finish, Virgin, or BBC Books. Those forms can all tell their stories in shorthand because their audience understands the code. This first paragraph of the new TV era has to go the long way around for the sake of the 10 million uninitiated who may (and did) watch.

And to that I say, "so what if it does?" Once in a while, I like to just stop and think about the entire basic concept of the show and revel in the majesty of its imagination, and the heights to which an author, a cast, a design team, and a director can leap to from this most powerful springboard of a format. We have an alien who looks like us but isn't us, who loves us and defends us and can sometimes hate us too, who can take one of us anywhere in the universe to any date there's ever been or ever will be, using the most fantastic and entertaining spaceship ever imagined. Isn't that enough right there? Maybe by episode 34 we might tire even of this, but this is _episode_one_. It's called "Doctor Who - Rose." It's job is to introduce both "Rose" and "Doctor Who" in a way that will keep loads of viewers watching and wanting to tune in again next week. Nothing more and nothing less. Oh, and it's only got 44 minutes or so to do it in.

In this job it succeeds brilliantly. It starts by simply showing us Rose, and within five minutes, Billie Piper's charm and acting chops have got step one nailed. She then bumps into some Oz-like elements in the form of a gang of Autons, and gets rescued in spectacular fashion by the Wizard - Doctor.

Ah, but we're not over the rainbow yet... this story pauses to let Rose and the viewer stop and think about it all while we see more of Rose's real life, namely her mother and boyfriend and home, and get to know her and how normal and nice she is some more, and we're also shown here a little of her stronger side when she clearly stands up on her own against her mother and boyfriend. Then along come Oz and the Wizard again, invading her home briefly, and getting her curiosity going. The rest of the story continues in a similar pattern, of her moving two steps down the yellow brick road in curiosity, a step back in fear, another step forward in bravery and another step more in curiosity, then another step back. For example, she goes to see Clive and starts to swallow what he tells her, until he says the word "alien" and then she pulls back. The two biggest forward-back-forward moves she does are when she first enters the TARDIS, goes back out and walks around it, then goes back inside again, and at the very end of the story when she at first turns the Doctor down on his offer to become his latest companion, then changes her mind when he gives her a second chance. This makes Rose into a perfect companion, and every inch the Dorothy figure this episode 1 needed. Billie Piper plays it all perfectly too, switching back and forth between fear for herself or for maybe-dead-real-Mickey to excitement and enthusiasm for the weird and wonderful things she's seeing without it ever looking jarring, illogical, or non-authentic.

Right, that's Dorothy down... what of the Wizard? So far, so good. Christopher Eccleston is doing what all the Doctors have done (and should do) and fusing the writing of the basic uber-intelligent, energetic, and curious Doctor coming from the writer's script with his own character traits, such as his speech patterns, jovial body language, and that goofy grin he loves to use. There are two moments in particular that marked out this new Doctor to me the most, one small and one BIG[tm]. The small one is during the bit where he is trying to leave Rose's life with the Auton arm and she's quizzing him on who he is, and after she asks "just the Doctor?" yet again, he quickly turns, flashes that grin, waves a hand at her high in the air and says, "Helllooo!" That's the sort of tangential humor I love to see in the Doctor. The BIG moment, as anyone who watched can probably guess, is when shortly after that he takes Rose's hand and talks to her about how he can feel the Earth turning and revolving around the sun and how at any moment we could all just fall off the planet. Both the writing and the performance fuse together flawlessly here and give us a verbal sense of the awe that a man like the Doctor must feel whenever he pauses while travelling and takes stock of the whole universe around him... and that we will hopefully get to see visually in future episodes. There is of course still a lot of room for more Doctor development, but again, this is only episode _one_, and that will all come when the time is right, I feel sure.

That leaves Oz, which consists of the TARDIS, the Nestene-Autons, and also the hints of an over-arching story arc and a backstory "war" that the Doctor says he fought in and which seems to have displaced the Nestenes. The TARDIS is so far handled very well, where they show us its basic abilities and properties and save its even more fantastic features for later. Again, they're starting small and building, and I can be patient. As for the Nestene-Autons... well, they're almost a sort of token villain here. We don't learn anything more about them than we did in their previous stories, and if anything, they seem to have regressed a bit in their tactics, being not able to make a very convincing Mickey replica, although to be fair, they did it very quickly and it was good enough to fool Rose, which is all it needed to do. They look, behave, and sound just as nasty as they did before, and the "mother" creature sure looks a lot better than the 1970 and 1971 ones did. The addition of child-sized Autons to their ranks was a great touch, as was the reuse of their classic sound effects, but I'm not sure they were directed all that well. They could've been much creepier than they turned out to be, and while I did find the comedy that they found in them to actually be funny, I think I prefer them when they're behaving more competently. They are not actually the point of this story of course... they're just there to be a "typical" foil to the Doctor's usual exploits, and in that they succeed just about well enough. (a bit like how the Cybermen, a Dalek, and a Yeti weren't the point in "The Five Doctors") That final element of the arc and the backstory gave us just enough to whet our appetites for future episodes, and was the perfect dash of salt for this great recipe of a show.

Story and acting-wise then I was very pleased, and pleased enough with the direction. Keith Boak seems to have got the most important things right (the Doctor, Rose, the guest cast, and the London setting), and what he got wrong (the Autons, and one or two other small missteps) wasn't all that wrong. Where I noticed his presence the most was in the pacing of it all, especially the opening act, and how much faster it was certainly than the older stories and even than other shows made today. A steady diet of this probably wouldn't be good for the whole series, but the way it was used here was very good I thought, and key in grabbing and holding that new audience's attention I'm sure.

The overall look of the finished show was better than I expected and better than the little bits I'd seen earlier on... it's very vibrant and bright and quite film-like looking, but I do still regret the decision not to shoot on either a film format or an HD-ready digital video format as this means the series' format is going to be out of date in just a few years time. I didn't mind the "techno" nature of the incidental music, just the choice of where to put it sometimes and the choice of the effect that was being gone for, which may have been out of Murray Gold's hands and in Keith Boak's. One moment in particular I didn't care for was when Rose is creeping in the cellar and the Autons are starting to awake and there's suddenly a string movement put in as though Julie Andrews is about to come bounding in with "The Sound of Music". It defused the tension instead of increasing it. (Graham Norton didn't help here either of course!) What of the much-talked-about CGI? I found it a lot more convincing with the full filmizing effect on this finished version than I did on some poorer-converted clips I saw before this, and really rather impressive in places, with the one glaring exception of the wheely-bin scene. The bit where Mickey first puts his hands on it and they stick is OK... it's what follows when the whole bin starts to undulate and open its "mouth" that looks completely unreal and not at all convincing. I've no idea what such a thing really would look like, but I can tell it wouldn't look like this... there's a sort of cartoon-like sheen to the bin at this point that completely sets it at odds with the rest of the image here. Everything else looked fine, especially the explosions (some of which were done with models I'm told... always a good move in my book), and I do want to save a special mention for the new way in which the TARDIS materializes and dematerializes, with its solidity pulsing back and forth along with the lamp on the top of the police box. Top marks also for taking the trouble to getting the sound effects exactly right and using the remastered versions provided by Mark Ayres on the Radiophonic Workshop CDs. I should also mention what I think of Murray Gold's arrangement of the theme music.... I very much like this approach he's taken, of mixing the original Delia Derbyshire-generated swooping sounds with instrumental ones in the gaps between. It's a little-remembered fact that this was in fact Ron Grainer's original intention with the original music... that Derbyshire would create these sounds that he'd then put real instruments behind them, which he abandoned when he heard the finished product she'd created, but it's nice to hear that approach actually taken and used here. I have to deduct lots of points though for his not including the "b" section/middle-8 section of the theme, which is my favorite part. I can only hope that it might turn up on a future episode (as it sometimes did in the original series... sometimes it would pop up and sometimes it wouldn't be there) or at the very least on a commercial CD release.

Scale of 1 to 10 for "Rose"... 8. Exactly what we needed, plus a bit more besides... I wouldn't say perfect, but in all the important ways, this was exactly what episode one of this new series should be. Next stop... the emerald city at the end of the world ?

7pm, Saturday 26th March 2005. If you count from the end of the television series, it’s over 15 years since the Doctor left our screens. It’s nine years since the TV movie. For me, it’s been just over five years since I’ve been enough of a Doctor Who fan to dream of the show’s return to television. It’s been 18 months since the announcement that Doctor Who was, finally, being regenerated for a new series. However you count it, we’ve waited a long time for this moment. But at last, it’s time…

One of the first things to strike me was the sheer breathless pace and energy of the story. The first few scenes quickly show us Rose’s life in a nutshell, though it then settles down to a more sensible speed. It’s still a million times zippier than the frequently slow plod of the long stories of Doctor Who from years gone by, and is quite an adjustment to make.

It’s been observed that the TV movie was a blend of Spearhead from Space, the story that saw both the debut of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor and of the sinister Autons, The Deadly Assassin, where the Doctor returned to his home planet to battle his old enemy the Master, and a bit of original material thrown in as well. But while the TV movie borrowed the Doctor’s alien physiology being discovered as he is treated in hospital, Rose takes the other, more exciting plotline that the TV movie left alone - the invasion of Earth by the delightfully scary Autons. Russell T Davies wisely chooses to define the Doctor by what he does - fight the monsters and save the world, rather than dull discoveries of two hearts and an odd body temperature.

Rose also jettisons any Gallifrey-bound backstory while popping in fun little moments that remind us that this is the very same Doctor and the very same show. Some hints about a new backstory are dropped, too. The references to a war in which the Doctor fought and planets which he was unable save are blatant signposts for the fans shouting “Start speculating here!” Robert Holmes, who created the Autons, had a knack of sketching in intriguing pointers to a wider universe, and Russell T Davies borrows this trick with intriguing and very cool sounding details such as the War and the Shadow Convention.

The actual invasion plot is rather slight, and there are some unexplained gaps in the plot, but part of the point of the story is to show events from the outside. For most people who encounter him, the Doctor is a mysterious figure who appears and disappears amid the confusion of bizarre and dangerous events. But through her curiosity and persistence, Rose manages to make her way into the Doctor’s world.

This sense of looking in from the outside is the point of the character of Clive. I loved the scenes with him. Just look at Russell’s other works like Dark Season and The Second Coming and you’ll see he does this apocalyptic style of dialogue so well, and Mark Benton pulls it off wonderfully. I thought the makers perhaps missed a trick by not craftily foreshadowing some of the later episodes set in the past. I was also half expecting Clive to produce a picture showing Rose accompanying the Doctor, which would have been an interesting complication. I think it also appealed because it was one of the few parts of the story which hadn’t been given away through spoilers or informed speculation, nor lifted from the Autons’ previous outings. It’s also a fun comment on the Internet-savvy age of the Fan. 

Speaking of fun, one of the best things about the show is the delicious sense of humour. I’d seen the clip from the wonderful wheelie-bin scene on Blue Peter on Monday. It had me in stitches then, and it was probably the single thing that most convinced me that the new series was going to be fun. It’s even better in the context of the story, being both hilariously funny and creepily disturbing. It’s not popular with those who think Doctor Who should be dark and serious and adult, but can you really imagine a show like that gripping the hearts and imaginations of children and adults up and down the country? I can’t, but the show as it is seems perfectly pitched to do just that.

Much of the magic lies in the two leads, the Doctor and Rose Tyler. Any concerns I might have had about Billie Piper just disappeared away as if they’d never existed, and I was too caught up in the story to be distracted by thoughts of her past career as a pop star. And as for the Doctor: Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor is energetic, funny, eccentric and scary, rather like the show itself. Russell T Davies’ interesting drama The Second Coming now seems like a dress rehearsal for the new series of Doctor Who, since it shares both writer, lead actor and composer. But although Eccleston’s turn as the Son of God had its light-hearted moments, as the Doctor he brings both the manic intensity and a much greater levity to the role. The structure of the story is more like a romance than anything else, and by the end I was desperately rooting for the Doctor and Rose to “get together” by her joining him on his journeys through time and space!

The TARDIS set is beautiful and impressive, and when Rose came in and the camera swung up and round to reveal it all to us, I wished I had a bigger television. It felt like watching cinematic spectacle on the small screen. The organic feel gives the impression of some alien force or creature with the merest crumbling veneer of technology. I’m not sure I like the way it enters directly into the control room - it makes the inside seem more exposed, more vulnerable. That’s probably a good thing, but it takes some getting used to.

Some people have slated the special effects, but if you want super-impressive (and super-expensive) effects, then Doctor Who is probably not the best place to look. They were just the job to tell the story, and didn’t need to be photorealistic to do this. They were of a good enough level not to detract at all, and to try and make them match the movies or American productions wouldn’t really have made the episode any better. It would simply have been a way for the BBC to shout “Look how much money we’re spending!” If people are put off because the show isn’t flaunting a big budget in this way, then I don’t think they’re much of a loss to fandom. Another prime target for criticism is the incidental music. I thought it was pretty good, myself, though for the most time I didn’t particularly notice it, which seems to me to be a good indicator of being unintrusive. 

The Autons themselves were suitably scary. I didn’t hide behind the sofa - it’s right back against the wall, and though my family discussed moving it forward to give us room, we didn’t get round to it. But I was hiding myself in my jumper as they began their attack, peeping out from between my fingers!

All my family watched the new show, and all of them enjoyed it. This includes my Dad, who doesn’t really like science fiction or fantasy type stuff, and my younger sisters aged 14 and 17. My younger sister usually considers herself too cool for things like Doctor Who. Her boyfriend loved it, so she’s now having to face the horrifying prospect that he might become a Doctor Who fan! The buzz from those I’ve talked to, in real life and over the Internet in various places, is one of genuine enjoyment and excitement. As the credits rolled, I grinned a big happy grin, knowing that up and down the country, a whole new generation had been enjoying Doctor Who for the first time.

Rose wasn’t the greatest piece of television in the world, which may disappoint some overexcited fans, but will probably please those doom-mongers who have convinced themselves the new series can never match the old. But it was one of the most exciting, energetic, confident and just plain enjoyable programmes on TV, and has all the humour, excitement and thrills for all the family to enjoy it. There’s nothing else like it on television, and it’s great to have Doctor Who back

‘Rose’ and its introduction of a very new style of Who seems to me to have overdone the modernisation of the programme, seeming like a disturbing parallel to the Blairite transformation of Labour: slick, soundbite-ish and full of spin (i.e. the trailers and RTD’s almost Stalinist grip on the series’ protocol and commercial representation). But I suppose, like New Labour, New Who still inevitably retains at least some vague traces of its Old ideology: chiefly a central character who – give or take a bit of pugilism here and a bit of unsubstantiated gadgetry there – still stands for brain over brawn. But in this first episode, this wasn’t enough. Eccleston presented us with a – fresh or blustery – break with past interpretations of the role with his ordinariness of appearance and very contemporary, Joe average vernacular. Yes, he displayed welcome eccentricity and Troughtonesque impishness, especially regarding his waving “Hello” when Rose repeated his name to him as they walked down a street. Eccleston retains some of the alienness of Tom Baker too. However, whilst an essentially working-class style Doctor with a pronounced – nay, even exaggerated – Northern accent is arguably a belated evolution of the character from his more middle-class, dilettante past selves, it is at least ostensibly nothing new: McCoy, the last substantial TV Doctor, pioneered this with his blatant, consonant-trammelling Scottish accent. I say ostensibly as McCoy did not in turn play on this as some sort of subtle inverted-snobbishness when up against aliens with received pronunciation: his occasional stumbling on lines was more to do with his own peculiar style of speech which was arguably a slight impediment. Eccleston’s Doctor seems to revel in his regional accent to such an extent that his articulation sounds sometimes a little lazy and self-consciously t-dropping which to me seems pointless and – whether we woolly-headed liberals like it or not – almost implausible, especially for a Gallifreyan (and I used to suspend disbelief with Drax’s cockney accent in Armageddon Factor). We can only assume the ninth Doctor has spent much time up north before coming to London – although he has also apparently recently regenerated (“well, could have been worse”; “look at the ears” etc.), quite muddling considering the revelations of his web-tracer that he has appeared in photographs from various times and places in the past and future in this incarnation!). His retort to Rose that “most planets have a north” in no way explains his blatant regional accent does it? Are we to assume that Northerners on Gallifrey, by some strange quirk of parallel linguistic evolution, developed Salford accents? To me this is just whimsical and sloppy scripting. The need for his accent to be picked up on in the narrative invites these sorts of criticisms when no believable explanation is forthcoming – again it seems simply symptomatic of the terrestrialisation of the show, which is needless.

As for the Doctor’s ‘look’. Whilst the toning down of previously embarrassing costumes (Colin Baker’s in particular; hideously self-parodying question mark accoutrements etc.) into a battered black leather jacket is welcome, the low-cut v-neck t-shirt is a big mistake in my opinion: it just puts too much emphasis on Eccleston’s neck and doesn’t look right, especially when coupled with his ludicrously short crew cut – frankly he looks like a Navvy on a night out. Toning the Doctor’s clothes down was good, refusing to keep him in a ‘costume’ JNT-style was also good (as although each Doctor prior JNT had a look, they did frequently change clothes while retaining the look – Pertwee wore variously different coloured smoking jackets etc. – and this really detracted from the believability of the JNT Doctors). But a v-neck t-shirt!? That was quite simply slack and absurdly ‘casual’ of the costume designer – why not a jumper or a shirt?

For me the strongest element of ‘Rose’ was the internet character and his photographic revelations about the Doctor which could – and should – have been further developed throughout the series. Instead he is killed off by a Top Shop manikin masquerading as an Auton. The incidental music makes Keff McCullouch’s almost bearable by comparison. In true Doctor Who tradition – and in spite, this time, of sufficient money and technology to do it justice – the Nestene Consciousness was, for the third time in the series, insubstantially and unimpressively manifest! Other than the admittedly topical and polemical line from the Doctor about the Nestene liking the planet for its pollutants, no other explanation was given for the Auton’s third invasion. Whatever explanation might have been given was conveniently disguised in indecipherable alien gurgles which the Doctor chose not to translate for us (obviously he had yet to install the TARDIS’s new translating mechanism revealed in the next episode) and we were meant to piece together some sort of background story from his very worrying mention of ‘the war’ which he ‘fought in’. This climax was extremely disappointing and frankly unforgivable for a series famed for its tying up of loose ends in each story (bar one or two McCoy Sapphire and Steel-esque outings). In fact, ‘Rose’ has no story whatsoever and is largely like a 45 minute trailer. Where RTD does succeed is in the dialogue between Doctor and companion, which is, on the whole, pretty good. But characters cannot totally replace storyline. Even Unearthly Child managed to weave a story together, in the first ever episode alone!

Other criticisms: the inexcusable whimsy of the burping dustbin which would have inspired death threats in the JN-T days – this scene makes the sight of an old lady’s slipper peeping out from a Cleaner in Paradise Towers comparatively tame. Similarly pantomime-esque was the Doctor’s frantic struggle with the Auton arm while Rose blithely boiled the kettle in the foreground. His comment on a couple not lasting due to one being gay and one an alien while leafing through HEAT magazine was again needlessly contemporaneous and not even funny. Satire is good and welcome in the new series, polemic and political/social comment, but I hope cultural comment will not only be limited to the philistine popular sham whose protagonists try to convince themselves is ‘culture’, and which most people likely to watch Doctor Who desperately wish to switch off from. Isn’t that the point of escapism?

There seems to be a popular unanimity as to the near untouchable writing credentials of RTD. With exception to parts of the equally overly contemporaneous and highly camp Casanova, I can only ask, why? Not only was The Second Coming a very obvious sort of idea, it was, I felt, implausibly realised and actually very boring. Much as I was – and still am – an admirer of Eccleston’s outstanding acting talents (particularly in Jude and Our Friends in the North), I literally could not muster enough interest to finish watching the first episode of this 'acclaimed series', let alone tuning in for the second instalment. In my opinion, it was simply ordinary, when it could have been quite extraordinary given the theme. I have therefore, unlike most fans, been dreading the return of Doctor Who – as well as excitedly anticipating it on a purely superficial basis – and although I feel this Doctor has much potential, I am disappointed as to the weak writing of this first episode, the complete lack of any storyline (arguably for the first time ever in the show’s history) and a dramatically undermining attention to contemporary trendiness which is ultimately pervading and dogging RTD’s other TV output, Casanova. I feel RTD is imposing his own tastes too much and too early on, and that these tastes and stylistic trademarks of his are in essence geared towards two-dimensional, one-off viewing; a sort of gimmicky, ‘let’s not take things too seriously’ approach. Ring any bells from the past?

Another note is that I really think the new Who production team’s Stalinistic closed shop policy (i.e. not allowing any external scripts or ideas to be considered presently) will be the Achilees’ Heel of this reinvented programme: just look at the completely unimaginative episode titles for one – these writers need urgent help with their titles!!!

A few other moans: people keep talking of how unusual it is to have a feisty, independent-minded female assistant – so what was Ace then? The first non-RP Doctor – what about McCoy (and arguably even McGann with his slight Liverpudlian accent)? Later in the series: Daleks who fly! Does no one remember Remembrance? A new, bigger TARDIS set – the McGann one was bigger and far more interestingly designed (for what was admittedly an appalling film). A future story involving blue-faced zombies in dress of different periods emerging from smoke in the Second World War? Just a hint of Curse of Fenric there do you think?

But back to ‘Rose’ and my overall criticism: every single episode ever of Doctor Who before has been worthy of taping and re-watching at least three or four times over the years (even the clangers). I have decided on having watched Rose for a second time on video that it is not made for re-watching like the old stories: it simply doesn’t have enough meat to its threadbare script, there is nothing to get your teeth into or any subtexts to reinvestigate as in past stories (bar the internet man’s scene and the Doctor’s soliloquy about the Earth moving). Rose is still ultimately typical modern TV: superficial with pale flashes of depth here and there but not enough to warrant returning to after a second viewing. This is, sadly, the first Who story I can say this about, and I am not happy about that. I sincerely hope things improve and we finally get a story worthy of the canon.