Tooth and Claw is not a bad Doctor Who story, but it is one that could have and should have been so much better. It does have a lot of good things going for it. There was an excellent monster which looked fairly frightening. The cast as a whole put on a good performance and were convincing in their roles. The setting looked nice and managed to feel fairly authentic from a historical point of view (Alright as a Scot with an interest in history I did have some issues with some parts of the plot, but no more than I have done with any number of period dramas). Together these elements had the potential to make a classic story.

And therein lies the problem: Tooth and Claw is not a classic episode of Doctor Who. A number of minor defects combine to spoil it. Firstly the opening with the monks went for spectacle rather than substance and logic. Why train the monks in martial arts rather than arm them with conventional weapons or brute force? The Kung Fu proved totally irrelevant anyway as the monks abilities were not really eluded to again. Indeed the monks just disappear from the plot after Father Angelo is killed. Equally why on Earth would Victoria knight the Doctor is she was going to banish him and Rose. What happened to them? Why did they not attack after the wolf was defeated? This to me smacks of a script in need of another draft.

Another negative is the ending came across as a laboured and I thought it was an unsubtle way to set the ground running for a future story arc and next year’s spin off. In my opinion, it would have been far better to hint at what was to come, by leaving the name of the house seen, but not spoken and to have omitted Queen Victoria’s final remarks completely. The Bad Wolf arc worked so well because we had no idea those words meant. This episode has completely blown any suspense over what Torchwood is.

A further problem and one which I fear bedevils too many of Russell T. Davis’ scripts is the nature of the humour. There is nothing wrong with a bit of comedy in Doctor Who, but too many of Davis’ stories attempt to get laughs via silliness. The Slitheen were an obvious example of this and here we have a ridiculous conclusion about the Royal Family being werewolves and an increasingly annoying running ‘gag’ about Rose trying to get Victoria to say we are not amused. Oh yes and Rose’s attempt at a Scottish accent…. Other writers like Stephen Moffat have struck a perfect balance between humour and drama, with the lighter side of their stories being far wittier and more intone with the rest of the piece.

I don’t think Russell T. Davis is a bad writer and he deserves credit for turning Doctor Who into the most talked about BBC programme. Moreover, he has some wonderful ideas and can write excellent stores when he puts his mind to it, but I do wonder if he is overstretching himself. I suspect that by writing several episodes on top of executive producing two series he is not giving himself the time to fine tune all his scripts.

Nonetheless, Tooth and Claw was better than most T.V. programmes and my criticism of it is just a sign that I have come to expect great things from 21st Century Doctor Who.

I feel so mean criticising my favourite series. I feel even meaner criticising the man who single-handedly brought the Doctor back and set it off in completely the right direction for the situation to now be that people of all ages actually give a monkeys about Doctor Who. But I feel that I've given RTD an entire season's benefit of the doubt, I even defended the pig. So I don't feel so very bad for being very, very disappointed with the first episode of the new season (albeit on initial viewing and writing a review merely seconds after it's broadcast).

I don't think that Russell T Davies is a very funny man. I think that encapsulates my problem nicely. The jokes aren't funny. "Chavtastic!" Not funny, but the funniest of a long line of turds.

I don't think Russell T Davies has that much originality. Which is fine when it comes to doing a quick Nestene story rehash to (re)introduce this character called the Doctor (or was it about introducing Rose?) and get everything off to a flying start. But MORE ZOMBIES? 'The Unquiet Dead' did that nicely enough, even the Autons in Rose were pretty Zombie-like, recalling 'Dawn Of The Dead' in the shopping mall. I wonder if the makers of the Matrix (not the Timelords, you goon, the Bros. Wachowski) will be having a word with RTD about the vast expanses of cells filled with humans kept alive in order to keep something else alive. Mind you, Eric Saward might be on the phone too: Hospital? Everything clean and white and miraculous on the surface? Underneath there's something pretty unpleasant going on? I was so, so, so hoping that the Sisters Of Plenitude were going to be above board. The only chance this story had of a twist would have been the cat-nuns (where were the cat-monks, by the way?) were actually just there to help people (which, in a way, they were). And am I alone in being reminded of the first Scooby-Doo film by the repeated (and repetetive) migration of Cassandra's consciousness? Even down to all the "I've got boobs!"-schtick. Mind you 'Freaky Friday', 'Big', blah blah blah.

I know that Doctor Who has always been a bit of a hot-bed for border-line plagarism, but I thought that was one of the elements of the old series that the viewer looked upon affectionately, perhaps indulgently. I thought the people making the new series were as aware of this feature/quirk/failing of the old series. I thought they would try a little harder. And by 'they' I think I really mean 'RTD'.

And a final gripe: I don't think Russell T Davies actually thought very carefully about how he was going to get that kiss in there. Just me, I thought he'd earnt and worked up to the 9th Doctor and Rose's kiss. This just seemed a dumb thing for Cassandra's character to do. It was also the source of more misfiring humour.

I don't think Russell T Davies should write any more scripts. I wish he'd let people who are good do it.

Mind you, I thought 'The Christmas Invasion' was genuinely brilliant. So was 'The Parting Of The Ways'. Perhaps he can only be trusted when he's got something important to do. Please Russell, I know you'll read this if it gets put up on Outpost Gallifrey, not only because it's useful, but also because you think Jos Whedon's brilliant (which he undoubtedly is). Save yourself, get more people to write the stories. You're getting tired, you need a sit-down.

If the last series began by riffing on early Jon Pertwee then this one began by mainlining the Douglas Adams era. Idiosyncratic english space opera at it's unashamed best. I also detected some of Warren Ellis's deadpan 'so-preposterous-it-must-be-true' sci fi gigantisms (to wit-"what kinds of disease? "All of them"). It's great to see that this show- which only a few short years ago was little better than a dusty antiques fair populated by curious, ageing fans- has been reborn so wonderfully.

First off- Bille Piper. Bi-liee Piper. Dang! Ding-a-Dang! One almost despairs at how good she is, because it means that surely she's destined for bigger (would it be offensive to say greater?) things, and soon. Horny teenagers throughout the nation will doubtless have fumbled frantically for the record button during the scene where Cassandra inhabits Rose's body and starts examining her new figure. Those of us older but with the mind of a horny teenager and a little patience will wait sweaty handed for the dvd. Ripping my mind from the gutter and fixing my sights firmly on Ms Piper's art- ART I said! She was the best thing about the last series and she's the best thing here, plain and simple. It's high camp all the way when the evil Cassandra posesses the Doctor's body, utterly convincing character acting from line to line when she takes Rose for a joy ride. Which is not to slight David Tennant in any way, shape, form or thought- if Christopher Eccleston was this generation's Jon Pertwee, Tennant may well be the new Tom Baker. The wide eyes full of intergalactic boggle, the grand canyon grin adding Tardis-like dimensions to Tennant's elfin face. All Bakerisms to a man. An effortless comedian one moment and mysterious, star weary eternal the next. I'm very excited.

Secondly (secondly? Thirdly, surely), the effects. Shallow I know, but...is it now boring to say that mainstream sci fi on the telly has to compete with the likes of (repeat after me in Dalek tones) Buffyangelstargatestartrek? Well yes, but the first bite is with the eye so to speak, and what a banquet New Earth was. You could practically SMELL the apple grass! New New York was Coruscant from the Star Wars designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Jack Kirby. Alien races have taken a few leaps forward since the last series (I was never keen on the porridgey Slitheen) and the Cat Nuns are creepy patrons of a stark, futurist hospital. Brilliantly though, the imagery is rightly second fiddle to the characters and the plot. There return of old face Cassandra and big face the Face of Boa signal that the new Who is creating it's own mythos whilst honouring the old, which is more than I could have ever wished for. A shame Cassandra had to be killed off though- imagine her teaming up with Sil, or even the Master! Fans, start your fanwanking. A fine set up for the future series which, if it mirrors the last one, will get better and better with each episode. The trailer for round two has me salivating- Werewolves! Warrior Monks! With Queen Victoria! In Scotland!

Vworp Vworp!

You know, if there was ever any question that the Doctor plays with time and space, it's all cleared up now. At the end of the "Christmas Invasion" special, they're standing outside the Tardis getting ready to go, in the dead of winter in the middle of all that "snow"...and in the beginning of this episode, when they're actually going, it's a lovely spring day with no spaceship-ashes in sight.

Why does the Doctor have companions? Why does he drag people away from their otherwise ordinary lives (and often into terrible danger) to whirl around through time and space with him? I think I know why. It's like all of time and space is a movie, and the Doctor has seen it all before. Watching a movie you've seen before, even if it's the best movie in the world, can get really boring--but if you have someone else watching it with you, someone who's never seen the movie before, then it's like the movie becomes entirely new to you as you see it through their eyes.

And that's what the Doctor's companions are to him--an audience. But not just for him, for the rest of the universe too. As long as he's got a young friend or two along, he can savor their amazement, and sights he's seen a thousand times before can seem entirely new to him. The Eccleston Doctor was too brisk, too serious, too ridden with survivor's guilt from his part in a time war that ended the entire rest of his race to appreciate it. He was never able to lighten up very far; the burden of his survival was always with him like a dark cloud. But the Tennant Doctor seems to have regenerated his world-view along with his body--and that's immediately apparent as soon as the credits are over and the Doctor and Rose step out onto an entirely new world, with a gloriously-rendered CGI city in plain view. Rose is awed, and the Doctor basks in it. And then it's off to a hospital complex to see the face of Boe...and also the face of Zoe, as Zoe Wanamaker returns to her role as Cassandra, the last surviving human. The funny thing is, though, Zoe actually has a lot less screen time than we realize, when we think about it after it's over.

The mind-swap/possession schtick has been done many, many times over the course of science fiction--at least half a dozen times in _Star Trek_ alone. (You could always tell when Brent Spiner was getting frustrated in his role as Data, because along would come another "Data gets possessed or otherwise just plain acts all crazy" episode to give him a chance to show off his range.) I wouldn't be surprised if it had even been done before in _Doctor Who_, as they've already done just about everything else. The thing about a good mind-swap show is, it has to make us suspend our disbelief in a rather unusual way. We have to _believe_ that this character, played by one actor, has been somehow "infected" with the soul of the other actor--and isn't just the same actor putting on a different mannerism. It's one hell of an acting challenge--and for all that people were prone to pooh-pooh Billie Piper's acting ability early on, she did a heck of a job with it here. It was easy to forget, over the course of the episode, that this was still Billie, just putting on different mannerisms--I found it easy to believe that this was the ghost of Zoe Wanamaker inside her head. David Tennant had less of a chance to show off, but he managed the trick just as well. As for the fellow who played Chip, well, I never saw him enough to know for sure, but he seemed to do a passable job for the lines he had.

It was great to see Cassandra again, even for just a little while. Like the best villains, she was painted in not entirely unsympathetic tones. Ironically, her portrayal here seemed to be almost the opposite of how she was portrayed in "The End of the World". In that episode, we saw her dedication to life, doing whatever it took to survive right down to becoming little more than a brain in a tank, as having made her inhuman--a coldly conniving rhymes-with-witch who thought little of killing off a space station full of spectators for the sake of her business interests. And yet here she was painted as much more human--looking back wistfully at the last time someone had ever called her beautiful, and being so shaken by her time in the mind of the infected zombie that even the Doctor, who had only moments before been railing at her to get out of Rose's body, reached out a sympathetic hand in spite of himself.

At the beginning of the episode, we could hate her. By the time her blackmail scheme against the cats fell through, we could love to hate her. Then by the end of the episode we found ourselves hating to love her, as she actually became for a time a sort of surrogate companion, helping the Doctor in his scheme to cure the zombies. I'm sure I wasn't the only viewer who wished she could have found another body to continue living. (Why on earth she couldn't just have had another brainless zombie body cloned for her from her own surviving tissue, I don't know.) The only thing that really struck a sour note for me about her appearance was her sudden change of heart at the end: "don't wanna die, don't wanna die, don't wanna die...oops, I'm in a body that's dying. I guess I've outlived my time and so I'll go ahead and die after all." It wasn't really believable for me that after all this time of trying to stay alive, she would suddenly decide so quickly to chuck it all. But the ending, where she gets to go back in time and die in her own arms, did provide a sort of fitting grace note to the character. And you never know, time travel being what it is, maybe we'll see her again after all. (It would have been funny if she had actually, at the last moment, left Chip's body and possessed _herself_, but that would probably have opened up too many chronologically weird and paradoxical areas.) Since this was an external intervention in Cassandra's timeline, I wonder if that would have changed Cassandra enough that she ended up as a different person? But that would be paradox, and which is why thinking too much about time-travel stories tends to give one a headache.

I have to wonder, given the Doctor's speeches about how it's Cassandra's time to die and so forth, whether he will be quite so sanguine when he comes to the end of his own final regeneration. After all, some of the Doctor's past adversaries have been Time Lords who were out of Regenerations--the Master for one, and his own accuser in the Trial of a Time Lord arc (which was in fact _himself_ at the end of his regenerations) for another. But I can't imagine the BBC wanting to let the show end for the sake of a little thing like running out of regenerations.

I have to admit to being very impressed by the makeup effects for the cat people. I've often wondered what anthropomorphic felines would look like in live action (being a bit of a furry fan), and this episode of Doctor Who shows them off very well. I'm still not sure how much of it was makeup and how much was CGI, but they looked very believable and real, not just like people wearing furry masks. I would have rather liked to see more of them than just this episode. Perhaps, like the Slythene, they might return at some future time. It would be a pity if they didn't.

The Face of Boe continues to be an enigmatic presence in the series. I wonder if he was always intended to be thus; he started out as just a big animatronic face in a tank, appeared a couple more times in the series, but now...he's still a big anamatronic face in a tank, only much more mysterious. And the third time he meets the Doctor will be the last time. Like the Doctor, he is the last of his race--and although he had been dying, the Doctor's actions in saving all those clone humans somehow revitalized him and showed him there was still more to see in the universe. So, in the end, the Doctor acted for the Face of Boe much as his own companions have done for him.

The storyline of "New Earth" moved along at a very rapid pace--perhaps too rapid. There was so much story-stuff to fit in, what with two different sets of villains, a Matrix-like chamber full of clone zombies, the return of the Face of Boe, and so on, none of the ideas really had room to get fully-fleshed out, or even necessarily properly explained. This episode might have done better as a two-parter, with more explanatory and exploratory material stuck in. The solution to the zombie problem felt a bit rushed and deus-ex-machina, not to mention a trifle silly and unscientific in its execution. And then the ending with Cassandra dying in her own arms was a perhaps a trifle over-sentimental. But in the end, that's kind of what _Doctor Who_ is all about, so I suppose I can't knock it too much.

“New Earth” requires a couple of viewings. Before moving on, I suggest that viewers looking for an objective opinion on the story are best to give the episode a repeat look. Why? Because there is a great deal going on, arguably a little too much for a 45 minute slot, but personally I would rather a Who episode brimming with ideas than the old fashioned four episode story that consists of the Doctor running back and forth up and down wobbly corridors.

“New Earth” is a tale that combines a heavy mixture of storylines and ideas. We are introduced to a future planet and society that in turn opens up a curious medical mystery. We have the welcome return of the Face Of Boe who is preparing to pass on a major secret to the Doctor. Another past character pops up in the form of Cassandra who is back from the dead plotting revenge. On top of all this, we have new humans; deep dark experiments breaking out unleashing havoc. With a rather large dabble of mind swapping to boot; it’s a busy story.

The story is the first new televised Doctor Who to be set on a different planet. The opening shots of New Earth are beautiful and the use of outside location combined with computer imagery gives the future planet a very honest and believable ambience.

The hospital is nicely designed, using a mix of studio, CGI and Cardiff architecture to create this key location. Like the planet itself, it works well. The lower levels may slap ardent fans with memories of the Nestene lair in “Rose” because, well, that’s what it is. Personally I’m okay with location reuse. As a Doctor Who fan I’m used to a lot worse and Blake’s 7 used the same area of the same quarry a good 4-5 times through the series. Veteran fans can’t grumble, the location is redressed and works well within the context of the story. In the end, that’s what is important.

The return of Cassandra is a surprisingly welcome one. Moving Cassandra away from the living skin trampoline allows the character to be reused without rehash; she isn’t just back for more of the same, she’s back to cause havoc in an entirely different way. This time Cassandra is jumping bodies in the hope of finding a new vessel for her snobbish persona. Given how well this works in context to the story, I can forgive Mr Davies for using such an old sci-fi clichй. The mind swap truly injects new life into an old character. Furthermore her reintroduction serves as a bridge the series divide for the new audiences, reminding them this is still the same show and operates as strong comic relief to a rather visually nasty story.

The mind swap also gives Billie Piper and to a lesser extent, David Tennant, something new to play with. Wisely, the mind swapping is kept mostly with Piper; the tenth Doctor needs space to expand on his own without too much mind control interference. However, when the Lady Cassandra possesses the Doctor, Tennant doesn’t shy from the chance to have some real fun.

Piper is excellent as Cassandra, and it’s nice to see her getting a chance to have some laughs. Piper has proved she can do drama on several occasions in Series One, but aside from acting as a humour foil, she never got a really proactive comic role. In “New Earth” Piper is virtually flawless. You really believe she’s Cassandra and it’s rare to see such versatility in young TV actresses, being they are so often picked for the aesthetic than broad acting ability. Once again, I must doff my hat to Miss Piper, from her shallow pop star roots she has come far.

“New Earth” has a script full of both comedy and drama that should keep the casual and ardent fan watching. The supporting cast give a solid performance, and the make-up throughout the episode is exceptional. The feline Sisters of Plenitude look super and it’s a pity that the TARDIS doesn’t actually work because a bit of time travel back to 1989 could have done wonders for the Cat People in Survival.

So let’s look at the new fangled Doctor. Not quite as show stopping as he was in “The Christmas Invasion”, Tennant’s Doctor is a little more subdued in comparison. Probably a good thing in retrospect as there is always a danger of the show being suffocated if it’s lead man hogs the spotlight. Tom Baker’s era suffered from precisely this problem in the later years of his tenure.

Nevertheless, Tennant has the chance to portray some comedy, drama and serious Doctor energy throughout the episode. His character retains those elements quintessential to the Doctor; he’s compassionate, eccentric, dynamic and heroic. As with his seventh and ninth regenerations, he has a nasty temper when people cross his ideology and he is still willing to risk his own skin if it will saves others. Certainly a more charming Doctor than the more sorrowful ninth Doctor, and not as in control as the seventh. He has the sparkle of the forth and the dashing dynamic of the fifth. He’s a good mix of what’s come before with a dab of something new. Tennant is very different to Eccleston yet unlike previous regenerations, say between Baker and Davison or Troughton and Pertwee, the character of ‘The Doctor’ feels less challenged. He’s a different man once more, yet he retains far more consistency than many of the previous transitions.

So what’s wrong with “New Earth”? First off, let’s dispel some fan criticism. In “New Earth”, there is what some people would call ‘serious plot holes’, which to me, can be translated as ‘aspects of the plot which aren’t explained because they really aren’t that important’. Strangely, we still live in a time where sci-fi shows are meant to punctuate every last aspect of the plot. People are still looking for the “What’s going on Doctor?” or “What is it Doctor?” or “What are you doing Doctor?” type of explanations. The frustrating thing is, that any fiction that creates such a futuristic Earth is all made up anyhow. Any explanations that are forthcoming are no more than technobabble, yet for some reason, fans still feel cheated without it. “How do the drug compounds work?” “How does mixing the drugs make them more potent?” “How did Cassandra move her essence from one being to another?” It all boils down to needless babble, wasteful babble and dull, dull techno babble. We are told what the drugs will do in the same way we used to be constantly told that “reversing the polarity of the neutron flow” would remove a force field. We know Cassandra can jump bodies, we also know such a feat is physically impossible, so why do we need to have it made pseudo-factual by some technowaffle? We don’t need to waste valuable story time with superfluous explanations, yet if the fans don’t get these answers they condemn the story. After years of complaints about excess technoyawn from Star Trek, I’d hoped fans would have moved on from expecting explanations at every corner - clearly not.

It’s a pity that there are such wasteful demands on the show as it’s real focus is the drama, not the sci-fi pokery. Television and it’s audience are slowly learning that no matter how much we move fiction into future or onto other planets, the drama always remains contemporary. Only be being contemporary in it’s dramatic elements can a story create the audience empathy it requires. Nowadays, science fiction dialogue and plots are trying less and less to be “out of this world” fearing sounding silly. I far rather that Cassandra and her ilk use contemporary terms like “chav”, offer dialogue with relevance to contemporary satire or play 21st century pop music than continually attempt to create new sci-fi jargon. It’s those pop culture and topical elements that help give the series a stronger rapport with a greater audience. I don’t mind people not liking this writing approach, but it’s a pity the writer gets attacked for “terrible writing” when it’s simply using a specific writing technique.

While I appreciate sci-fi does have a more natural requirement for explanation than contemporary drama, I don’t think it needs to waste valuable character and plot time explaining what makes no sense anyway. With Buffy, Battlestar Galactica and now Doctor Who moving in this direction in the sci-fi genre, fans need to move on too. It’s not just perceptions of sci-fi that are changing, it’s sci-fi as a whole. We are no longer being spoon-fed – get used to it.

That said, there are still a few glitches here. The Rose and Doctor connection is laid on a little thick for my taste. Not an objective criticism for as we all know, sexual tension sells to mainstream markets and it’s mainstream interest which justifies budget. Doctor Who exists comfortably because of mainstream support, not fan loyalty. Personally, I found the dialogue outside the TARDIS a little icky but I know I just have to like it or lump it – it has to be there for the shows continual broad success.

Also in regards to such mainstream contexts, Rose does spend an awful amount of time touching herself in front of a mirror. Certainly, this works within the context of the plot but does feel a little ‘for the dads’ and that is an element of ‘old Doctor Who’ I hoped we were moving past. Most likely this was simply a character requirement to the episode, but it did feel slightly overdone and Piper has had a large makeover for this season. I just hope there is no attempt to move Rose into sex symbol territory. Keeping mainstream interest is one thing, but I’d hate Doctor Who to lose the dignity it has created for itself.

That said, such “show concerns” from fans like myself are amusing mocked by the writer, who seems to enjoy adding references that seem there just to irritate our anal fandom. Such references to certain Doctor body parts being “hardly used” are bound to create fury by purists. Good on you Davies, keep on pushing the boundaries. Doctor Who should never be safe, no matter how much many fans would like it to remain within certain boundaries.

Another minor gripe is the music, some of which is a return to the “End Of The World” motif. It’s not bad at all, but a little heavy at times. This has always been a problem in the new series, feels it could be pushed back a bit in the mix.

On the first watch of “New Earth” I was a little dissatisfied. There is a lot going on and as such it does sometimes feel as the story is screaming for some space to expand certain scenes. The contagion’s final cure in the finale feels a little rushed. The episode made a big issue of the amount of human containers opened in the basement, yet we see only a roomful of humans cured and that doesn’t give the impression of how fast this cure must be spreading through the diseased humans. It’s not a major issue, but the episode suffers from a few similar minor quibbles that on a first viewing seem bigger than they actually are.

Overall, this was a nice journey into the future and proof the show has come far from “Rose”. It’s not perfect; it’s a little over crammed with plots and ideas which in turn do take a slight toil on the pacing, but in comparison to the old show, it’s still miles out there in terms of script, production and drama. A good watch, an even better second viewing, this is far better than some of fandom will admit to. This is good New Who and while I fear for it’s critical success, with the media looking for a time to knock down what they’ve spend a year to build up, I think the production can be proud of this entrance into the second series. Well done – ignore the old school thinking from the sci-fi community and keeping moving forwards. My grandfather always used to say things were better in the old days and now I fear, it’s turn for my generation to start declaring the same.

It feels like such a long time since we first met David Tennant’s tenth Doctor properly in “The Christmas Invasion,” and even then we were only really given fifteen minutes or so to see what he could do. I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with him and “New Earth” gives him the opportunity to play the Doctor on so many different levels. For example, we see him calmly and softly talking to the dying Face of Boe; we see his ready wit and charm as he bangs on about the hospital not having a shop and warns Rose to watch out for the disinfectant; we hear his utterly flat and emotionless voice as he discovers the Sisters’ sentient lab rats and most importantly of all, we see the anger burning his eyes as he threatens the Novice.

“I’m the Doctor and if you don’t like it… if you want to take it to a higher authority there isn’t one! It stops with me!”

“New Earth” begins with a short pre-credit sequence just to re-enforce to viewers all that Rose is leaving behind at home, and it doesn’t seem like any time at all before the Doctor and Rose are laid on a hillside in the galaxy M87 in the year 5,000,000,000,023 talking about how much they love travelling with each other and how they had chips on their first date at the end of the world! Brilliant! Outside the mind of Douglas Adams, where else could you have a scene like that? Russell T. Davies need only use a few carefully selected words to sum up just who the Doctor and Rose are and just exactly what they do. A 5-year old kid who has never seen or heard of Doctor Who (and I’m very happy to say that’s not likely these days!) could tune into this episode and ‘get it’ within just a couple of scenes. In the same vein, casual viewers (let’s face it… there must be a regular audience of about 7 million of ‘em) could just flick over to BBC1 and be back into these characters within the blink of an eye. Superb writing.

This episode also reminded me just how incredibly fast the show is nowadays. The pace is absolutely frenetic; Chip, “The End of the World” spiders, Cassandra and the Sisters of Plenitude are all established within five minutes of the episode’s start! Were this the classic series, it would be the remit of the first two or even three episodes just to introduce these characters and we would have to dutifully while away hours of our lives watching the Sisters shiftily skulk about until the Doctor finally uncovers their evil machinations. Cassandra, for example, wouldn’t even be revealed until (at the earliest!) the Part 1 cliffhanger. I couldn’t believe some of the early reviews that were posted on Outpost Gallifrey that said the episode was too fast. I mean, how can it be? If it makes sense (which it does) and it’s entertaining (which it undoubtedly is) then where is the problem? It took Russell T. Davies just two lines of dialogue to set up the shady goings on in the hospital – one from Cassandra to Rose, and the aside between the two Sisters about one of the patients being conscious! Personally, I’d rather sit and be thoroughly entertained for forty-five minutes than to merely be mildly entertained for over a hundred.

I was also pleased that Davies had opted to finally send the Doctor and Rose right out there into the universe; to a new planet in another galaxy. I had very few complaints about the first series, but the one thing I would have liked to have seen was an alien world. Well, this time around it happens in the very first episode, and it’s absolutely beautiful. New Earth successfully combines the essential elements that make our Earth what it is (for Earth, read Britain) – green grass, rocky shores, blue sky – but it also has just that hint of the fantastic; those huge moons and planets in the skyline, the futuristic city of New, New York. Moreover, we weren’t show it for long – it wasn’t necessary. A few quick snapshots of the vista were all that was needed to establish the episode’s setting; for the most part it was a very traditional studio-based corridor romp.

From the start “New Earth” set itself up to be a sequel to “The End of the World”, and although it reused so many characters and elements from that story (even the incidental music) the episode was different enough to be fresh and entertaining. Aside from the new Doctor (which in itself makes the whole thing a brand new ball game), Davies used Cassandra very differently. The whole ‘body swap’ notion is one that is constantly done to death in science fiction, and why? Because it works! It creates tension, humour and it’s a brilliant storytelling device. It’s also, I cynically noted, a way to do Cassandra on the cheap! Billie Piper really excelled herself in this episode. When Cassandra took over her body, I had to really listen to make sure that Zoe Wanamaker hadn’t overdubbed the lines as it sounded so much like her.

“New Earth” is definitely one of Davies’ funniest scripts, and whilst it might not have anything like the dramatic weight of “The Parting of the Ways” or “The Christmas Invasion,” it’s incredibly entertaining… and filthy! Rose’s scene with Chip and Cassandra has to hold the series record for the most double entendres ever; it had me in stitches! I also really like the little details in there, for example, how Rose picks up a pipe as soon as she realises that she’s not where she’s meant to be. She’s learning. So is Davies – I bet there isn’t a ‘Dad’ in the country who wasn’t grateful for his “Curves! It’s like living inside a bouncy castle… nice rear bumper!” scene. Move aside Peri, we have a new champion… well, nearly! I don’t think any story will ever manage to top “Planet of Fire”…

It’s also very effective how the writer kills two birds with one stone as it were. Once again, very economically with just one line he establishes that Rose is still alive inside Cassandra and that as Cassandra has access to Rose’s recent memories, she knows who the Doctor is. There’s even a laugh to boot with the “he’s changed his face! The hypocrite!” gag – not many writers could do all that with such few words.

And then, of course, we come to the kiss, and just like all the Captain Jack stuff in “The Parting of the Ways,” it’s a load of fuss about nought. It’s not even Rose who kisses the Doctor; it’s Cassandra! She been living as a piece of skin for who knows how long, so it’s no real surprise that she’s a bit frustrated! Moreover, it felt very natural and in keeping with the light-hearted nature of the episode, and even gave David Tennant a chance to further demonstrate his versatility as an actor. It’s evident that the tenth Doctor has a ready wit and is generally very funny in a “I’m cool” sort of way, but the kiss gave Tennant a chance to be funny in more of a slapstick manner with his incredibly high-pitched “Yep… still got it”, the straightening of the tie and the puzzled (but not appalled, I noticed – he loved it!) look he had on his face. Being the Doctor though, he’s back on the ball almost instantly and he knows that this isn’t Rose. Her lack of interest in the lab-rat patients that they discover is the final nail in the coffin.

Most of Davies’ Doctor Who stories seem to have some sort of statement to make, never more noticeably than in “The Christmas Invasion” with all the Harriett Jones / Belgrano stuff. In “New Earth,” he uses the hot topics of cloning and medical experimentation to form the basis of his story. Such issues are wonderful fodder for Doctor Who because the Doctor is such a profound, unwavering moral force. In this episode, for example, one the one side of the fence sit the Sisters of Plenitude, who would argue that their experiments are for the greater good, and on the other side of the fence sits the Doctor, who basically says “bollocks, it’s not reet!” And then, just for fun, we have Cassandra in the middle who just wants to live forever and make a fat pile of cash into the bargain! With such interesting issues explored, Davies is in a way going right back to the show’s fundamental tenets of educating as well as entertaining, albeit a bit cynically. The year 5 billion and it’s the 21st century all over again!

I only have one real gripe with “New Earth,” there is just one scene towards the middle of the episode that I thought was a bit weak. Cassandra has knocked the Doctor out with her perfume, and has him locked up, ready to give him every disease in the book as revenge for ‘murdering’ her in “The End of the World.” I didn’t like the way how the Doctor didn’t escape, he just sort of got swept up in events as Cassandra is forced by the Sisters to go to “Plan B” – it was a bit too fifth Doctor for my liking. Especially in an early episode, I felt the Doctor needed more to do to win the audience over, as it were. Instead, he gets to mince about with Cassandra in his head – “ooh baby! I’m beating out a Samba!” – saying things that I found amusing but are really gonna wind some fans up – “so many parts… and hardly used!” – although in his defence, when he’s in control of his own body he’s tough. He steadfastly refuses to help Cassandra escape – “Give her back to me!” - in the end forcing her into the body of one of the lab-rat people, setting up the story’s conclusion.

“I’m the Doctor and I cured them… pass it on!”

After a lot of running about in corridors being chased (Doctor Who heaven!) the Doctor and Rose / Cassandra reach the relative safety of the top floor of the hospital. The Doctor’s solution to the situation is very much in the style of the “anti-plastic” get-out in “Rose”, here the Doctor quickly cooking up a cocktail of different intravenous cures and showering the lab-rats with it using the ‘disinfectant shower’ introduced at the start of the episode. This got absolutely torn to shreds in the initial batch of reviews on Outpost Gallifrey; much to my amusement someone even called it “weak science.” They are watching a TV show about a man from outer space with two hearts and thirteen lives who travels around the universe in a phone box fighting monsters (who for the most part are suspiciously humanoid) and they nit-pick about him administering a cure which is meant to be delivered intravenously as a shower! I mean, come on! It’s magic, innit? He’s the Doctor. He’s nearly a thousand years old. A bit of medical jiggery-pokery is nought to him; he’s a Time Lord! For all we know it could have been the saliva that he secreted when he opened the bags of cures with his mouth that cured these people!

If Russell T. Davies and co. listen to such trivial complaints (though I’m sure they’re to sensible to) Doctor Who will end up going the way it did in 1989. It’s like I said earlier; I’d much rather watch 30 seconds of the genius Doctor create an almost magical cure from whatever he has to hand than watch some scientist quietly shuffle about in a lab for ages tediously coming up with a cure the boring sciencey way! This is Saturday night prime time!

The resolution of Cassandra’s story gave the episode quite a touching ending. Having taken over the willing but dying body of Chip, her loyal ‘half-life’ clone, Cassandra is finally prepared to die. Her experience in the body of one of the lab-rats, privy to their intense suffering, had somehow changed her, and so the Doctor allowed her the privilege of visiting herself in the past (at the last moment she can ever remember being happy) and dying in her own arms, a very sombre ending to a very upbeat and amusing episode. Oh, for those of you that want to nit-pick – where are the Reapers, hm? It’s lucky that moment didn’t happen to be a “weak point in time”…

On a side note, I found the Face of Boe scenes very interesting. Just as it was in the first series, the first hint of the show’s mythology in series two is incredibly well done, the Novice’s dialogue is almost poetic. “… he will speak these words only to one like himself. It is said he’ll talk to a wanderer… to the man without a home. The lonely God.” It was also quite an event in itself to have the Face of Boe speak; I think that they got his ‘voice’ just right – very soft, very wise… nothing too over the top. What this big ‘secret’ is exactly is something which I’m sure will be widely speculated about until he meets the Doctor for the “third and last” time. I loved the Doctor’s childish reaction to being told that it will have to wait – “Oh! Does it have to!” Fantastic stuff.

Here’s my theory on it, if anyone is interested. “… the man without a home. The lonely God” made me think about how the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, and as the penultimate episode is entitled “Army of Ghosts”, maybe some of them survived the Time War, for some reason the secret of their survival known only to the Face of Boe. I’m sure that when this ‘secret’ is revealed in the next 12 weeks (or perhaps even next year) I’ll look like a complete idiot, but still…

In all, David Tennant’s Doctor had without question the best opening story of all the Doctors with “The Christmas Invasion,” and so “New Earth” inevitably suffers from that ‘difficult second album’ syndrome. It’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s that people wouldn’t give it chance to be. It’s light and it’s fun, it happens fast and it’s over quick. Tennant and Piper are both phenomenal, and Russell T. Davies’ writing is right up there with them. For me, he could single-handedly run Doctor Who forever… unless he regenerates the Doctor into a woman. Then he’s dead.

Seriously though, “New Earth” has been the best thing on TV since “The Christmas Invasion” and I don’t see any reason why this series shouldn’t be every bit as good as the last, if not better. Remember the slating “Rose” got and look how well things turned out there...