When the announcement came through that a new series of "Doctor Who" was going into production, ready for a 2005 transmission, I have to admit, my first response was: "oh, no!" Not, I must add, because I was afraid it would be rubbish, but because 2005 was scheduled to be my year abroad from university. I was to spend the first half of the year in Germany, and wouldn't be able to see it! Typical - I became a fan in 1996 (yes, the movie did convert some of us) and they have had almost a decade to bring it back; when they do, I have to miss it!

Still, thanks to the delights of a friend's DVD recorder (she was home for episodes 1 and 2 only) and BBC DVD's quick work, I have now had the pleasure of episodes 1, 2 and 3. I've read all sorts of reviews, and really, some fans will moan about anything, won't they?

"Rose" is, as far as I am concerned, the perfect way to bring the show back. We meet the Doctor through the eyes of Rose, played so very well by Billie Piper. I remember being impressed with her in "Canterbury Tales" but here she is something else. 

I showed this episode to a non-fan friend who sat through it, all the while gasping in surprise at how "cool" it was. "Doctor Who" is cool. Believe it. 

So, why do I love Rose so much? Well, firstly, there's the Doctor. Wild, manic and very very funny, this is the Doctor as he should be, showing up, saving the world and leaving again. Eccleston nails it from his first word - "Run!" and is the star of every scene he is in. Somehow, despite his everyman look, everything about him feels right - I believe in this Doctor, I want to spend time with him, to get to know him. His "I can feel it" speech adds much more mystery to the character than any of the Cartmel stories ever did.

Next up, Rose herself. She balances initial disbelief with a growing realisation of what she is encountering so well, and her first scene in the TARDIS is brilliant. 

Thirdly, the TARDIS. Just what I'd hoped for, the designers haven't simply ignored either the original design or the TV Movie version, and have come up with a cracking set.

Fourth - the Autons are back. Though not named, we know who they are. The plot is a little non existent, but it's fast, it's fun, it's an adventure and it's "Doctor Who", people. rejoice.

There are many magic moments in "Rose". The first time you see the Doctor. The lovely scene where he looks in the mirror. Clive's menacing summary of our hero. The beautiful, haunting scene where the Doctor tells Rose who he is, and the arguably even better bit just afterwards where he walks back to THAT BOX and you hear THAT SOUND over a haunting score as Rose runs back to see the dematerialisation. Rose's first trip in the TARDIS. The Doctor pleading for humanity, suddenly very serious and very scary - "I am talking!" The Doctor and Rose leaving together at the end.

Oh, it has faults, but you know what, I don't care. "Rose" marks the welcome return of a hero who should never have been away for so long. Christopher Eccleston is Doctor Who. Believe it. Watch it. Love it.

My first impressions of 'Rose' are very mixed. I got the feeling that Christopher Eccleston was playing The Doctor as a bit of a smug goof. I can only think this was a gimmick for his initial performance, because there were moments of intensity which made me think, yeah, this is The Doctor after all. These being the skin of the Planet speech, and the regret in his voice for worlds he was unable to save. From the things I've heard I get the impression that these undercurrents are going to slowly accumulate. So, for now, I'm reserving judgement on Christopher, because I think he can be a great Doctor if the script is permitting.

Rose herself, well I knew Billie Piper could act, and she does a good job of making Rose a character who is very self-aware. I thik that's her strength, she has no illusions and also she is very curious. There is one point in the episode where her boyfriend holds her back from helping the Doctor. This seems typical man on the street mind your own business stuff. She isn't like that though, she 's like the Doctor and will not mind her own business, she will get involved. For me Billie was the best thing in it, there being a real sense of her joy as she rushed for the Tardis door at then end.

Supporting characters, well Clive was just Mr Exposition, who met with a tragic end and I didn't care at all. The boyfriend was annoying, cowardly, and the actor who played him was far better as the Auton. Nice body movements and menacing smile, all subtlety was lost, however, when he started speaking too fast. Oh and Rose's mum I simply found annoying, like she wondered in from a certain East London soap with her talk of benefits and shopping. She was a caricature, so again, fear for her safety or caring for her character, nill. Social realism, matter of opinion, yes annoying people like that do exist. IFor me Rose was the only member of the human race who made any emotional impact. The episode sorely missed a human authority figure, who goes through the stages of suspecting, threatening and then trusting the Doctor.

Being a Doctor Who fan I suppose I'm used to a slower buildup of facts, and I even like the padding. There was no padding in this, and as I said, no subtlety, no real buildup of darkness or threat. I'm going to hear things like, this is tv for the 21st century and needs to be fast and sharp, but for me it was missing something. I understand though, that's it's a first episode, and it's going to take a little time. I was very pleased to see the dummies break through the shop windows, nice throwback to Spearhead in Space.

So... mixed bag, but I haven't given up. This was my first taste, and it may take a few weeks to get into. It's good to have the Doctor back and the title sequence was very Tom Bakerish. Shame about the BBC3 audio bleed, as Rose enters a darkened room filled with dummies there is riotous applause.

The anticipation was almost overwhelming; the reality of it almost too unbelievable to be true, but yes after 16 long years it was finally back. The years in between had been almost impossibly bleak years of vague hopes, that made even the most ardent of us consign this series to the graveyard of TV history. We went off to watch Star Trek, Buffy, Babylon 5 and the X Files, but sitting in front of the telly tonight I realized that still nothing had stirred the feelings, had quite stimulated those fan boy urges as much as Doctor Who could.

Video recorder poised and we were off. 45 minutes later, it was all over, and time to be honest. Yes it was enjoyable, yes it had some great moments, but no it was not perfect, and nor did I really expect it to be. I had similar feelings to those I first had when watching the TV movie, very modern, very slick but not edge of the seat stuff. At times I felt the series was trying to be too hip, the lightness of tone was perhaps just a little too flippant. But this time I am not worried because there are 13 more episodes to come and I feel sure that any problems inherent in this first episode can be ironed out.

Eccleston has yet to prove himself but didn't do anything to put me off either, I think after a few episodes he should settle in. Piper too, as Rose gave a solid performance as I was always sure she would. Tardis was great, theme tune and titles were the best since the original, and there were some great moments of humour. It was possibly the first Doctor Who where I have laughed out loud and it worked for the most part. 

I am confident this show is in good hands, but I think that the production team should be confident that they have a winning concept and not feel the need to pander to every conceivable demographic. I think this first episode was trying to throw off the stigma some people have of Doctor Who by throwing too many things in the boiling pot, forgetting a little of that atmosphere just like the 1996 movie did. It was great to see the Autons, but they were to be honest shoehorned in and for the most part played for a bit of a joke. The show needs to slow up just a little, and do its own thing. The audience will go with it if they are allowed, but if every episode plays as if it's seeking admission to the trendy club then there could be problems ahead. But well done Mr. Davies and co, you have done the almost impossible thing and reinvented Doctor Who without it being total crap and that surely deserves some praise. Just one request, please start putting the Doctor's face in the title sequence!

The Doctor is back, and it's about time and time again that I see the usual and inevitable comments and opinions about the first episode. There is only one way people will be able to enjoy the "perfect" episode of Doctor Who, and that's to write, direct, produce and star in it themselves. In the real world, fans will have to mix some water in their whine because this is a series for the general public, as it always was at the height of its popularity.

What I think will be a factor for the remaining twelve episodes will be a tension between those who see television as a visual medium and those who see television as talk radio or visual book writing. That seems to be a major theme in some of the preceding reviews, and may be a direct result of the overkill of novels that kept the series alive for the past 13 years.

What initially struck me as positive is the aggressive visual style of the episode Rose. Show, don't tell. We wisely get a sense of Rose's life in only 93 seconds in a wonderful sequence where the rest of the world goes by quickly with swish pans and ramp edits, and her world, despite some quick cutting shots, seems to move slowly. 93 seconds is all it took, and only a "See you later" of dialogue. Within two minutes we have established the baseline from which she will grow and develop as a character over the course of twelve more (plus?) episodes.

This brings me to a point I think many are overlooking when they comment on "too much" and "no character" and such. Think of the 2005 season much like Season 23 or Season 1: a year-long journey where not everything gets handed to you on a silver platter in episode one. If it were handed to you in episode one, what do you do for the other twelve? Recycle it all? Repeat it all? That would not be effective. Russell T Davies knows that the series has to maintain character cliffhangers throughout thirteen episodes as much as plot cliffhangers throughout the run. You can't start at the top of a cliff, because there's only one direction to go; rather, we need to see Rose and the others climb the hill to that cliff.

Another wise decision was having the creepy bits also come within the first five minutes. It might have been interesting to have Rose observed by some shadowy figure in the basement (you know Who) while she calls for Wilson, but still the creepiness works, and the chase scene was effective in its pacing and urgency. No stumbling, brightly lit Mandrels anywhere here.

Wilson's death resulted in a missed opportunity for some DW-style black humour. Some of the Doctors would probably have said, "The CEO position's been terminated" or something (remember the sign on his door) instead of "Wilson's dead." Maybe that's just me looking for stuff like that.

The first five minutes is make-or-break, and so far episode 1 is a winner on all counts. This is followed by some sparkling banter in the elevator that quickly establishes the Ninth Doctor as someone who can shift gears in the time it takes to ascend eight floors, before he detonates a bomb and destroys a building. Love it. This causes Rose to lose her job and immediately establishes an interconnectedness between what the Doctor does affecting Rose and what Rose does affecting the Doctor.

And we still haven't hit the ten-minute mark! Is this too fast for viewers? I have read that a programme must capture channel flippers within THREE SECONDS to hold them! Three seconds! There is no attention span anymore. This is a world where written communication to the other side of the planet takes one second as opposed to one minute by fax or one fortnight by mail. Get used to it, because it isn't going away. I wonder how long it will be before we have split screens showing two plot strands at once…

So, dialogue must be minimal and precise like a poet's poetry. Action must be quick and effective. For the most part, we will arrive after things have been set up, because we will not be allowed to spend 25 minutes setting up grandiose plotting. The plots will already be running. The audience will have to jump onto the side of a speeding train, because the train sure as hell won't be waiting for passengers at the train station. 

Rose's mom is so grotesque that she puts a smile on my face. The running gag about compensation and the dialogue about the Greek woman are straight out of Robert Holmes' quill. I look forward to her ongoing outrages as the series progresses.

It was probably a mistake to kill off the character of Clive, as he may have been both a useful provider of facts and possibly a thorn in the Doctor's side. I enjoyed his brief stay in the show as I swear I know him in real life! He also allowed some visual comedy by boyfriend Mickey who made me chuckle every time he glared at Clive or his neighbours. And did anyone else catch the Survival music in Clive's neighborhood?

Most people hate the incidental music. It was possibly aimed too much at the young women who groove to that sort of funky hip hop stuff, but that's the point: Rose is a 19-year old woman who would listen to it. It relates well to her and she was the focal point of the episode. I suspect we will hear different styles in future episodes.

Rose (the episode) then arrived with a confidence and a brazen declaration that this is the way it is, so take it or leave it. Finding a middle ground for the general public and fans is so very tough, and I think the production team nailed it. If the fans were 100% happy with it, then something somewhere is amiss.

I don't think I have ever seen a better "introductory episode" in any show. 9/10.

My hats off to Russell T Davies and his team for supplying us with a great first episode. Don't get me wrong this isn't the best piece of writing we have ever had on the show but it introduces the show to a whole new generation of kids with considerable skill. It was sexy and funny and fast and all the great things about modern television.

I remember seeing a drawing in DWM of the eighth Doctor being rampaged by Autons on the streets of San Francisco and I remember thinking what a great pilot that would have been, certainly infinitely preferable to the story we eventually got. Obviously Russell T Davis had the same idea and he utilises the Autons skilfully in this first episode to really get the kids attention. When they come smashing out of the windows and shooting innocent bystanders I am certain that today's children will be equally as enraptured as those of the 1970's.

What Davies has done that is especially clever is to introduce the series through so much that people will recognise. You have a recognisable main character (Rose) in a recognisable setting (London) with a recognisable monster (shop window dummies). How can anyone fail to understand that? It was the domestical scenes that impressed me most about this episode to be perfectly honest; there was a lot of subtle touching between the actors that suggested real intimacy between them and the grounded, believable performances sold the story just fine. The gritty, down to Earth locations (the flat, the garages, the restaurant exterior) were well counter-pointed by the more fantastical locations (the beautifully lit London Eye, the Nestene Lair) and made them seem wonderfully otherworldly.

Christopher Eccelston is such a brave chap to take on a role with such baggage and I have to congratulate him for pulling it off with so much charm. I wan not sure about him for the first ten minutes or so, he seemed to be a bit goofy and McCoy-ish but he soon settled down and behaved as if he had been playing the role for yonks. I especially liked his scene on the Thames and his sudden burst of anger, condemning the human race as stupid apes. And the Doctor's huge grin when he realises just what Rose is trying to show him behind his back is to die for. Simon and I both agreed he was totally hot.

A huge round of applause though for Billie Piper who after the initial shock of her casting I was behind one hundred percent. What a revelation. Warm, witty, believable and totally hot. Forget Mary Tamm Rob, this is the girl that would turn a man straight! This episode is all about Rose and I would argue that the success of the pilot rested on Piper's shoulders as much as Eccelston's and she managed to connect with the audience with effortless ease. There were too many scenes where I was punching the air with delight but her "We can't hide inside a wooden box!" and "You were right, you ARE alien?" were superb moments. Billie makes entering the TARDIS an EVENT, which is something that was far too often forgotten in the series after AN Unearthly Child (except, amazingly, for Tegan in Logopolis) and I loved how the story explored how she loved being caught up in the excitement of it all (she is grinning like a nutter when they start running around London). Davies capitalises on the wish to escape our humdrum lives and leap into adventures with outer space and I found impossible not to identify with Rose. Ooh somebody has been watching far too much Farscape! The new TARDIS interior is certainly eye catching, probably not as much as the TV Movie's attempt but they have captured the scale and the awe of that last attempt. It has a very organic feel to it that I liked a lot, for once you get the idea that this isn't just a giant computer but a living organism in its own right. I could certainly see a lot of scope for lots of imaginative camera work in upcoming episodes.

Too much humour? I don't think so, this has to appeal to the kiddies after all and burping wheelie bins and gaping Mickey's are just the right way to go about it. Whilst Eccelston and Piper are playing their roles for all the depth they can get away with (well in a script about a 900 year old alien who fights shop window dummies) Noel Clarke goes for a much broader performance and he has come in for some heavy criticism which I think is a mite unfair. Whilst I could have done without his "P..pizza!" pronunciation I really enjoyed the wheelie bin scene, which was as silly and as scary as it needed to be. I also quite enjoyed his reluctance to help the Doctor, why all the people who meet him some around to his way of thinking?

Didn't you just love Jackie Tyler? What a hopeless character! All that guff about compensation was hilarious (well Simon laughed). And her reaction to the Auton massacre was perfect, utter confusion and then sheer terror (the poor actress looked like she had walked into the wrong programme at first!).

I do have to comment on the special effects which were much, much better than imagined after listening to some ungrateful gits over at Outpost Gallifrey bemoan the quality of the production (and if that sounds like dismissing other peoples opinions Mikey, good!). Nothing made me go "WOW OH MI GOD THEY MUST HAVE SPENT MILLIONS ON THIS!" but there were certainly enough great set pieces to confirm that Doctor Who has entered the new millennium. I loved headless Mickey smashing up the restaurant and the Nestene creature, both were highly convincing pieces of CGI. The lighting was excellent and gave the entire episode a real sense of style; Davies' comment that he would rather watch beautiful images than ugly ones certainly looks as though it has made it on screen. The whole episode was a delight on the eye.

The direction could probably have done with tightening up at bit. Compared to eighties Doctor Who this was a triumph but compared to other SF shows that are on the market these days (I'm thinking of the slick and quick Battlestar Galactica and the trippy and sensual Farscape) it didn't quite have the oomph all the time. Certain scenes (such as the montage at the beginning and the wonderfully frantic climax) had real energy and style whilst others (the more domestic scenes) were directed more akin to a modern soap.

I don't want to walk away from this review sounding negative however because this was everything I had hoped for and more. Considering he had to introduce all the core elements of the series and try and tell an individual story (which was a little thin but perfectly serviceable) as well Russell T Davies has done us proud. This is everything we could have hoped for and more, distinctly British in flavour but far more interesting and well made than anything I have seen in Britain in ages.

This is Doctor Who for fans and the mainstream audience. I never thought the series could make the connection between the two but I have never been more pleased to be wrong.

They may not have noticed the Nestene Consciousness glooping away under the their Eye, or the first suburban street in ‘sowf’ England where wheelie bins outnumber cars; or even the back of a department store that looks like a Bananarama set; but they will have noticed that Doctor Who was back. If you are going to reintroduce a brand (wistful, irrelevant aside to the Marathon chocolate bar), then you need all the mass marketing you can get so that the audience dusts off the nostalgia and buys into the product. Throw in a faux ratings battle; get the press paralytic at the press launch; and deck the billboards with reams of paper; and before you know it Joe public has an inkling that the only place they should be on Easter Saturday is squared eyed in front of the telly, swirling down the odd vortex, whilst choosing the right Celebration (must be low on sugar).

So, the success of the first Doctor Who TV episode since the millennium bug had us all looking at our Argos watches in shame is one of brand and marketing. Without some unsung hero dashing out the copy; building the profile; marketing the brand, the opening night would have had all the wrong signals.

The BBC Production Team seems to have mirrored this frantic oversell. Rose, as a first episode, has a lot to do in terms of positioning characters, revisiting core components of the series, whilst modernising the experience for a family audience with attention deficit disorder. It succeeds on all these levels, which is why we all shrug our shoulders and ignore the absence of story.

It is nice, therefore, not be given the time to think. One of the terrors of the old Who format was that the audience was given precisely that. Stupid plots ambled away, as some extra hilariously gurned their face off to the sound of someone tapping a teaspoon on the side of a cup. Episode one of the new Doctor Who was a cold water splash of wink, wink; say no more. Those silly Nestenes, always the wheelie bin, never the bride (hang on...).

Now, one cannot have style and no substance without some decent characters popping up, or popping off (screen), to ride us through the romp blindly. The entire better if they are grounded in reality by way of the better Carry On films. Some of the fun sequences in the opener belonged to Jackie Tyler and Mickey as they quickly reminded the audience how good comedy was in the Seventies. For a moment, in Rose's flat, it looked as though Christopher Eccleston was about to join in (Carry On Shameless, anyone?), but, no, this was a tease; just one of many in the opening script to conjure up the collected experience, and stop the eyes from drifting to the land of long sewer sequences filmed with daylight effect bulbs. As it turned out this new Doctor (soon to be old) was a bit of a fruit loop, desperately trying not to be Tom Baker. He succeeds here (not without fighting the urge to flash his pearly whites all over town), because, below the line, he is complex and alien. His also totty, which, in this age of living plastic (holds sides) is going to get bums on seats in the same way that a starved monkey will blank the banana if shown female monkey porn.

Billie Piper is also totty, but one that squints in lifts to indicate that the scene is going to change, and that she is going to have to wander in to a dark warehouse clutching the Lottery money, rather than go to the shop and buy the ticket . Rose is an intelligent Vicky Pollard; family friendly tinkers at social policy are off the cuff and quickly zipped along so there is not too much explanation around why her black boyfriend is a useless, cheating (?) git. One can only hope that the guy she gave up her education for had a bit more going for him; otherwise one seriously has to question her taste in men. Oh yes, that’s right, she goes off with the Doctor in the end to film a Timotei advert. Still, think of all those parents sagely rattling off the benefits of education as a prompt after the first episode, completely decimating the audience for Doctor Who Confidential looking at work behind the scenes.

Speaking of which, perhaps one of the production team can shed some light on why much of the ‘human’ drama was filmed using techniques more akin to Danielle Steele’s ‘Secrets’. Did someone borrow the soft focus from a Cosmopolitan shoot? Boak’s direction was similar to that used in NY: LON, until there were more than three words of dialogue when by all accounts he panicked and just left the camera running, or had some poor guy walk backwards with a steadicam at pace. At times there were breathtaking movements where the direction aided narrative simplicity (93 seconds of Rose huffing and folding jumpers as synapses connect for the viewing public), and the big set pieces were, well, big; but there just wasn’t much time for Boak to imprint this episode with much identity. Such a monster piece of television, with the cry for more monsters, promoted as a monster hit.

Which, of course, it was. A huge hit, and there is none more excited than licensing division of the BBC; or Russell T Davies; or all those lovely creative folk that brought Doctor Who back into the mind set of a nation who were more surprised it was coming back , but could tell that it had been away. Chip-eaters up and down the country suddenly found themselves thrown into a world of fantasy, romp, camp idiocy, thrills and sugar rush. They could pretend for 45 minutes that they were not the dysfunctional unit they knew themselves to be, but a family screwed up in front of the telly in a rare vacuum of shared experience. Fake and artificial, maybe, but not at all dissatisfying.