The excellent School Reunion was going to be a difficult story to follow - especially in the emotional stakes. If anyone could come up with the goods it would be writer Steven Moffat and, in many ways, he almost did it!!! Doctor Who has always worked well when exploring more unusual concepts and ideas - The Mind Robber being a perfect example of the unexpected. So mix the court of Louis XV, robotic clockwork killers and a futuristic spaceship with a living heart and instant time windows into the events surrounding Madame de Pompadour and you have a very non-traditional but enjoyable DW adventure.

Season One gave Christopher Eccleston some very good lines but the Ninth Doctor tended not to be the centre of the plots - Rose almost dominating many of the story lines. This time round David Tennant's tenth Doctor is very much the leading figure with many aspects of his emotions and past being investigated. His attraction to young Reinette as her imaginary friend from behind the fireplace grew to a full blown fascination with the man called the Doctor - as the Doctor met the older versions of Reinette the mutual attraction grew until they touched minds and understood each other's loneliness. OK so many DW fans will not accept that the Doctor should have romantic thoughts but surely this is a Time Lord who has become very vulneranble after the death of his race, has learnt how devastating his involvement can be with his former travelling companions and now desperately needs to belong to a race - even if it is human. Another emotional rollercoaster as the Doctor experiences what could have been a very passionate relationship only to loose his Reinette and become a wanderer in time and space again!

The feel of the story is excellent - BBC Drama always excel at period pieces so the lavish external and internal scenes around Versailles looked great and the clockwork droids were both chilling and powerful - those black eyes and smiles were positively Hammer horror at is best!

A relatively small cast excelled with Sophia Myles' performance being outstanding. Poor Rose and Mickey were very much in the background this time - but as for Arthur the Horse . . . a future rival for K9 perhaps!!!! David Tennant gave many dimensions to his character again - almost Tom Bakerish in parts - but the humour here was far more in keeping with the story (as last week). He is really a tremendous Doctor and is developing into his own special characterisation.

Every episode of this series seems to take the show on further and further - the clips of the Cybermen episodes suggest that the best could be yet to come!

Two things to say at the outset of my review. 1) This is the only episode of this new series that I have seen so I maybe unfair in basing my opinion on this one story. 2) David Tennant is streets ahead of Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor - in the right story he could be one of the greats.

First the good things about The Girl in the Fireplace. I greatly enjoyed David Tennant's performance up to a certain moment, which I'll write about later. Gone was the gurning of Christopher Eccleston, here was a Doctor who could save a child from the horrors lurking under her bed without making cheap jokes and grinning like a maniac.

I also found it refreshing that Rose had very little to do in this episode and that it mainly focused on the Doctor. There has been a lot of gushing about Miss Piper's role in the new series on these reviews and I don't think that it's any coincidence that these are entirely written by blokes. I'm not saying that her performance is bad, but her character can be tiresome. The rivalry over her in the last series between the Doctor, Jack and Mickey was pathetic and her possessive attitude to the Doctor is also starting to annoy.

I also loved the costumes and settings for this story.

The moment my disillusionment came was when the Doctor went sneaking around after Madame Pompadour like a lovesick schoolboy seemingly dazzled after just one kiss. I felt as if the Doctor was being transformed into some kind of cosmic Casanova or getting a touch of Captain Kirk Syndrome. The whole thing would have worked better if Madame's passion for the Doctor had been entirely one-sided and he'd had to resist her seductions!

I found the Doctor acting drunk very cringe-worthy as well - it was like seeing my Dad plastered - and where did he get shades from in 18th century France?

Was this episode also a not so subtle attempt to prepare the audience for Rose's departure? It seems that these days the Doctor would rather spend the evening dancing with his latest conquest than save Rose's life. He also didn't seem to show a great deal of concern at being stuck in 18th century France away from her. Had this episode been placed in the previous series the Doctor's whole concern would have been to get back to Rose.

The villains here were not particularly scary either, apart from their very first appearance. They didn't seem to be very robustly designed and it seemed that practically anything could destroy them. This made it all the more surprising that Madame Pompadour seemed to have made no preparations for their arrival in the five years after Rose's warning. All they would have had to do was dump buckets of water over them or something similar. Maybe they should have dumped a cold one over the Doctor and Madame at the same time!

Anyway this is just one story among others - maybe it's the Bad Wolf of this series (not a lot happened in that bar a lot of male posturing over Rose) The bit they showed of next week's episode looked very good. Less mush and more action!

Tonight’s episode by Steven Moffat was another masterpiece. The opening of Reinette calling out for the Doctor in her time of need through a fire place, opened this piece with intrepidation of how does she know to call the Doctor?

Enter the titles and we are now in 51st century in a space ship, on investigation the new crew wander around while Rose wants to know where when why, Mickey is gob smacked that his first journey is on a space ship. The whole design is great and the CGI of the space craft and outside through windows is fantastic. The crew find a fireplace, eighteenth century at that, and a girl Reinette who says that it is France in 1871. The Doctor finds a way of opening the magic door which is a spin of the fireplace. I loved that especially the way that the Doctor now has some adventure on his own. David is fantastic in this scene making it all very frightening and dark. He finds the clockwork man under the bed, what a creation really spooky and the weapon is very menacing but again using items that children can identify with. Having the young Reinette setting the journey is good for the children too as the fact that Reinette controls the danger is a good plot, the clockwork men need her for something but what. The eerie Tick Tock in the back ground and the music behind is subtle but so important and really adds to the overall tension and the darkness that is being created. The Doctor saves Reinette by taking the clockwork man to the spaceship.

The Doctor attacks the clockwork man and then unmasks. This is a wonderful creation, clockwork mechanics a great design concept that works so well. The Doctor revisits Reinette who is now a woman. Wow did anyone see the kiss coming; I thought this moment was shocking but yet surprisingly likable. This Doctor is so charasmatic and a flirt that it certainly goes with this Doctor that kissing would happen. David’s Doctor is tender, passionate and emotional and I think this makes David’s intepretation fascinating to watch.

In this episode we have another powerful women’s part in Sophia Myles taking on the part of Reinette. This is a great portrayal and Sophia has made good work of all lines emotion and drama that she has been given. You can see why she was cast and it is lovely to see so many women getting decent parts in science fiction. This series has been delivering these strong roles and Reinette is a character that is instantly likeable; wish I could say the same about Mickey.

Back on the spacecraft and Rose is teaching Mickey about time travel and getting on with it. Rose is a strong character but is being limited by Mickey. Fortunately Rose is so well written and acted by Billie that she is able to shine even in limited time. Rose’s emotional journey continues in this adventure, the heart being wired disgusted Rose, the jealousy she shows at why did you pick this woman to the clockwork man shows that she doesn’t want to share the Doctor with a beautiful woman like Reinette, who is clearly gaining the Doctor’s attention. Rose also benefits with a lovely scene with Reinette on her being ready when she is 37 and demonstrating how difficult it is for her to explain the concept of how Reinette’s life is being viewed by portals in Mirrors, Tapestry’s and Fire’s. The scene where Reinette walks through the tapestry onto the spaceship is simple but clever. Reinette after seeing into the Doctor’s mind while the Doctor searches for the answer, she sees and understand the Doctor’s loneliness that comes from his travelling and long life. The line to Rose about we understand that the Doctor is worth the monsters don’t we Rose, again illustrates to Rose there is more than one person who knows why she travels with the Doctor. Mickey sees this to and implies to Rose that the Doctor surrounds himself by women a point Rose chooses to ignore.

The relationship between the Doctor and Reinette is superbly played and this journey is why the adults will stay interested as it is a beautiful and emotional ride. Each time portal window showing another layer of the relationship and even though time is limited between them the time is enough to show a love story.

The story climaxes with the Doctor penetrating the window riding on a horse. Genius where else would you see this moment anywhere else but in Doctor Who. The visual effect was strong and well worth the tremendous efforts of all the production team involved and Steven’s ability to write without budget constraints in mind. This scene is definitely a fantastic achievement. Saying that though all departments are equally as good, the visual effects and set pieces are really strong. The location of Ragley Hall fits beautifully and the costumes are a real highlight of the episode in my eyes. The clockwork men and women look visually fantastic and I love the contrast of the regular cast members against the back drop of the eighteenth century costume. This episode is definitely going to very re watchable as you soak in all the elements that have gone into this episode, there is too much to take in on one showing.

So the Doctor heroically saves Reinette and leaves Rose on the spaceship. With the Doctor trapped Rose cries over the loss which is another Billie beautiful moment and so subtably done. We then move to David whose portrayal over the loss of Reinette at the end of the episode is so compelling. The Doctor showing this emotion is very bold stuff but it all works so well. Words don’t always say it all and it is to David’s credit that he can command the scene even when saying nothing is what makes him in my eyes the best Doctor there has been so far. I know that many people will be saying that we just move on to the new but I believe that it will be difficult to emulate David when he decides to go. I’m hoping that this isn’t for years.

For me the only element not working in this series is Mickey, he didn’t do anything for me last year and I find his character so unmoving, you can see Noel is giving his best but it not holding my attention. I only hope that with continuing episodes this does change as this element may spoil a weaker episode but as we haven’t had one yet I’m not worrying about it.

I loved this episode right from the first scene, with a teaser that skips ahead in the Doctor's narrative to show us Reinette talking into her fireplace, calling for the Doctor to come help her from the monsters that are attacking. Most importantly, it's beautiful and intriguing at once and serves as a perfect thesis for the whole episode. Secondly, I can't recall the original TV series ever skipping ahead to near the ending like this before, although it has been heard many times in Big Finish audios, and is another example of great ideas from the wilderness years being folded into the new TV series.

The rest of the episode is likewise wonderful to behold and difficult to predict as it goes. This is mainly because, as in "The Empty Child," Steven Moffat has based the whole science fiction problem around a mistake by technology. If there were a logical reason for everything to be the way it is, it would also be predictable and therefore dull and boring. If, however, things are the way they are because of a very false premise on the part of the antagonist, then the root cause of it is both difficult for us to guess and yet entirely logically connected to everything else in the story that follows from that false premise, and so it all does make sense to us in the end. First he did it with nanogenes that didn't know what a human should look like, and this time it's a robot repair system that's had its chips scrambled so that it thinks the woman for whom it is named is therefore its perfect replacement central processor. (The way this was all finally revealed in the very last shots of the episode was brilliant as well.) It then of course naturally follows that it'd send its robots to try and get that spare part, and that the time windows and the fireplace and so on could be the means to that end, and as Reinette tells us, a door once opened can be walked through in both directions, and so it makes sense there'd be a horse on the spaceship and so on. These are all exquisite romantic images as well, and half the reason that they are is the same reason why anything truly beautiful in nature is, because it's all what logically follows from a single flawed premise. It's like the crystals on a snowflake. They're extremely complicated and beautiful at the same time, and they all come from moisture freezing around a single, imperfect piece of dust that was just floating in the air. Unintelligent design is often better than things intelligent designers come up with, and is certainly never predictable. Each snowflake is a masterpiece in itself for although it forms by the same rules and laws of physics as all the other snowflakes, each core piece of dust is itself an unpredictable and unique "flaw" in the air. Can you tell I love this way to build a story yet? Of course, now I'm onto it, I'm afraid it means I might be able to see what's coming in Steven Moffat's next story next year, but perhaps not, if the mistaken dust particle in that one is random enough.

The design and direction crystallized around the script utterly perfectly as well. The art direction, costume design, and cinematography in the France scenes is the equal of any award-winning period piece movie, lending the whole thing an air of class that "Doctor Who" rarely, if ever, has achieved before this. My favorite images though were, in no particular order, anything that Reinette was wearing, the ballroom itself, the nearly seamless CG done on the location shots to make them look like France of the period, the exquisite clockwork inside the robots' transparent heads, the spaceship exterior which didn't look like any other spaceship I've seen, and of course, the shot of the Doctor riding the horse through the mirror, smashing it as he goes. There's so much attention to detail everywhere you look, and I'd like to highlight the "spring/summer/autumn/winter" motif they had going on as the Doctor makes each visit to Reinette at different stages in her life. There was a similar trick used to good effect for Rivendell in the "Lord of the Rings" movies, but I don't care if I've seen that trick once before, for it really fits here just as well, perhaps better. The shot selection by Euros Lyn was just as good as that which he gave us in "Tooth and Claw," and yet of a very different style, and I'd now put him alongside Douglas Camfield or Graeme Harper on the list of the best directors "Doctor Who" has ever had.

There were a few other parts to the story that also looked familiar to this Big Finish listener. The time windows are _very_ like those used in the audio "The Time of the Daleks," and there's even carriage clock clockwork running it as there, only not quite so directly. Here it's running robots that then run the windows. The juggling of time in the narrative as well as in the events in the story is another Big Finish trademark. And the books get a great shout-out as well with the Doctor's saying that he's the thing the monsters have nightmares about, which is directly from Paul Cornell's NA book "Love and War," as admitted to by Grand Moff Steven in the podcast commentary for this episode. (and Paul had reused it himself in his BF audio "The Shadow of the Scourge") I'm all for this kind of picking off the fruits of the trees from the wilderness years, and rumor has it there's more of this to come next week...

The episode is, at its core, about what a romance between the Doctor and a human woman might be like, and at the same time about why that's not possible for him and why he avoids it. Sure, the kissing and the partying and the "dancing" is all well and good, but for the Doctor, it's all too fleeting. As he told Rose last week, humans grow old and wither and die, while he doesn't, and so his relationships with us must always be short, which is why he normally cuts them off. He finally meets a woman who could match him in every respect and could perhaps really be a true equal partner to him, and at the same time he's meeting her in a way which magnifies his central problem of the humans always living too short a time for a Time Lord. When he reads that letter she wrote to him as she lay dying, you can almost see his hearts sinking through the floor as the weariness and loneliness and sadness gets to him in a way that hasn't been seen quite so well before. I almost wonder if perhaps the TARDIS could've shown us some sympathetic reaction where her lights dim at this point or something... nah, I think not. That'd just pull focus off the best scene David Tennant has recorded as the Doctor yet, and the one where at last the Doctor's great age really shines through with what Tennant is doing. That's the one thing that's been missing from the Tenth Doctor up until now, that sense of eternity, and I didn't quite realize we hadn't seen it yet until this scene. It's there now, and it's as if the whole Doctor is back with us again, in a way I don't think I've felt since I don't know when. Well-played, David Tennant, well-played. You're my favorite now.

Another favorite I have is Sophia Myles, who turns in what I think is the best guest star role so far this season. Yes, better than Elisabeth Sladen or John Leeson or even Anthony Head. And I'm not saying this because of how she looks physically, which is tremendous of course, or at least, I'm only saying it about how she looks with her eyes. The eyes are what tell you how intelligent a character (and the actress behind the character) is, and with every look Sophia Myles has something going on behind her eyes that screams "look out, Doctor, I'm just as clever as you are." Roger Delgado used to use that "look" to hypnotize people in an evil way that made you believe he really could do hypnotize people just by looking at them. Sophia has a good and (of course) feminine eye-stare that makes you believe she really can root around inside the Doctor's mind just as he's doing it to her. And what a look she gets too... I _adore_ that line she has that goes "Doctor... Who? It's more than just a secret, isn't it?" And that's something else I hadn't quite realized was missing from the entire new series at this point and is now back as a result... restating the "Who" in "Doctor Who"... re-emphasizing that the Doctor was different from the other Time Lords even before they were all killed and he wasn't. If the series starts to earnestly bring that sort of thing back up again more often, then we'll _really_ be cooking with gas...

If the episode has any drawback at all, it's only that Rose and Mickey were sidelined a bit, and still what little time the story had for them was very good quality time, particularly when we see Rose have these jealous pangs towards Reinette but which then turn to sympathy and sadness for her and her situation, and when Mickey is the one who spots how the Doctor needs time to be alone at the end of the episode after Reinette has died. Oh, and the caption on the scene that establishes the spaceship should've said "3293 ± 50 Years Later" instead of 3000. Or something like that.

And I'll save my last comments for Mr. Murray Gold, who turned in a fantastic score again this week. He implied in DWM that perhaps not all of the music we heard in the 2005 season was what he himself wanted to write but was asked to write. Based on how much he's improved in these last four episodes, it sounds to me like the leash has been let go, because the scores have been so much improved on last season.

Here's hoping that freedom is continued to be encouraged in future.

11 out of 10 for "The Girl in the Fireplace." I did really love it that much. It's an instant "classic." Well done everyone.

Being a Doctor Who fan can be something of a double edged sword, on the one hand one shares a more intimate involvement with the show and its characters than the casual viewer, on the other such an involvement often means that one has greater foreknowledge of each episode than is sometimes healthy. From hearing a story title, to seeing stills from the set, previews and finally the next time trailer, one tends to build up a mental picture of the story, one that will very rarely if ever be much like the transmitted program.

In building up that mental picture one often builds the image of the perfect episode one would like to see, crafted from the information available. Seeing the final transmitted episode nearly always leads to a slight sense of deflation as one realises that it wasn’t that perfect image and in reality could never hope to be. And that is the curse of being a fan, no matter how much we try to leave our hopes, anticipations and fears outside the door, we always carry them through, we will never have that sense of detatchment that the casual viewer has. Being a fan however inevitably leads to the compulsion to rewatch an episode no matter how good or bad it maybe, and it is on that second viewing that I think the Girl in the Fireplace holds much of its appeal. Much like Ghost Light used to be cited as a story which improved on repeated viewing, so I think Girl in the Fireplace will join its ranks.

If I am honest I really didn’t know what to make of this episode on first viewing. It was so different from the last 3 stories and to most tv drama as we know it, that I wasn’t really sure whether it worked or not. On the surface it shares some very close similarities to Steven Moffat’s story from last year which attempted to mesh a more cerebral concept within the Russell T Davies template. For this viewer the Empty Child didn’t quite gell, with the first episode feeling a bit leaden and the story only really coming to life towards the end. With Girl in the Fireplace the new Doctor Who seems to be maturing, realising that it doesn’t have to be thrill or joke a minute, that it can have an intelligent story which keeps the viewer guessing and doesn’t lay all plot developments on with a trowel. The pace at times felt totally at odds with the first 3 episodes and that was a little disconcerting on first viewing, but I think it is good that every once in a while the new series can be comfortable with its success and not be afraid to try a quieter more contemplative episode.

The clockwork droids were probably the best old Doctor Who monster there never was, the idea and execution were so classically Doctor Who, that you cant believe the idea hadn’t been thought of before. Unlike some of the other writers Steven Moffatt seems perfectly in tune with that surreal creepiness which writers like Robert Homes excelled at, if anything I think this new series should be creating a whole new generation of bed wetters. The robots were only let down only by the fact that it was never explained what they really were or who created them.

The episode really though belonged to the Doctor, and perhaps out of all Doctor Who ever, provided the most intimate portrayal of the character. A Doctor Who romance is always going to be a bone of contention for fans, and I must admit a few years ago I would have been aghast at the idea. The Paul McGann movie had a romance angle which was very poorly shoehorned in, and would have made many a producer very wary of attempting the idea again. But rightly or wrongly Russell T Davies has introduced the fact that the Doctor is seemingly not as asexual as we may have thought and indeed does long for phyical intimacy whether that be female, male, alien or whatever. The fact that the Doctor has always been assumed to be asexual could be looked upon as an unwritten assumption which was misinterpreted by various production teams over the years and quickly became fact. In 1963 the stern professor like character portrayed by William Hartnell was not likely to set many pulses racing, so such issues were neatly sidestepped, and when the Doctor regenerated into Patrick Troughton the reality of a Saturday afternoon childrens adventure series meant that there was no pressing need to even address the issue. Lets face it relationships per se were barely touched upon in the original series at all, so the general assumption reached by Joe public was that if the Doctor wasn’t getting his leg over, he couldn’t be too bothered about that sort of thing. So I suppose Russell T Davies had to ask the question: why in the 21st century would it be so unthinkable? and the fact that this has so far been handled in a fairly subtle manner, has not detracted too much from the mystique of the character.

Girl in the Fireplace didn’t really have enough screen time to suggest why the Doctor and Renette formed such a bond, but within those constraints feasibly recreated the Doctor as a romantic hero. The new series has always played slightly on the fact that rather than being an intrepid adventurer, the Doctor’s lifestyle is born partly out of necessity. He is an alien nomad destined to never really belong in a time and place, he must always move on, and this episode much as Father’s Day did, suggests that perhaps deep down he hankers for a mundane normal existence. This is somewhat at odds with previous incarnations, Pertwee would have been off into space in two minutes flat and away from the cosy cofines of Unit given half the chance, but once again distanced from the old series this approach offers a much deeper motivation for the character, even if he does become a little more human in the process.

Rose took a slightly back seat in this episode and following School Reunion, we got the impression that the character is on a gradual journey of realisation that she is not the centre of the Doctor’s universe she had assumed herself to be. Noel Clarke made a worthy addition to the Tardis crew, but wasn’t really given a great deal to do on his first galactic outing.

Despite the plot occasionally seeming to drift off at tangents at some moments, creating a rather uneven pace, the story managed to maintain its momentum and ably enhanced by Murray Golds nearly always superb incidental music and Euros Lyns direction, by the end the story had taken on a lyrical almost fairy tale quality. The ending was both poignant and perhaps the saddest so far in the new series. Fortunately avoiding the gross sentimentality of Cassandra’s death in New Earth, the fact that the Doctor didn’t use the Tardis to go back made the ending all the more stronger. Much as with Sarah Jane in the previous episode, we find that the Doctor has missed the moment and must move on once again, popping in and out of lives but always as Renette put it, unable to take the slow path.

I didn’t see the ending coming and I must admit it was a pleasant surprise, but unfortunately shared the same problem as many new series episodes in that it raised more questions than it answered. Exactly why did these supposedly advanced droids think that the head of Madame de Pompadour would repair the ship just because it had the same name? The plot device is pretty much the same that Mofatt used on his earlier story, the idea that highly advanced technology can make a huge glaring error based on following simple logic, but the revelation was not enough to quell all questions raised, and much like Ghost light, one feels we will probably have to wait for a DVD commentary to gain a full insight into the logic of the plot.

Beautifully shot, a good central performance from Sophia Myles as Madame Pompadour and some rather weird but wonderful ideas made this an episode which will I think always be a neglected gem. Straddled in the middle of werewolves, K9 and Cybermen it was unlikely ever to be a huge crowd pleaser, but will always be an episode for which each new viewing holds something new.

В“The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other.В”

In the build-up to series two, I found myself getting very excited about early episodes like “School Reunion” and “Rise of the Cybermen.” Others, such as “Tooth and Claw” and “The Girl In The Fireplace” I didn’t know all that much about and thus didn’t have great expectations of them. Nevertheless, the superb trailer for “Tooth and Claw” literally had me salivating yet when I came to see “The Girl In The Fireplace”’s rather bland trailer (combined with writer Steven Moffat’s “guarantee” that it would not be as good as “The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances”) I sat down on Saturday evening expecting little more than a witty little filler episode. How wrong I was…

В“The clock on the mantle is broken. It is time. Doctor! Doctor!В”

The pre-credit sequence was all that it took to engage my interest. The creepy noise of the clockwork robots; the brilliant period music and costumes; the beautiful cinematography; the mysterious woman that В“lovesВ” the Doctor! Who is she? How does she know him? How does she know heВ’ll come? Moffat had me hooked from the start.

В“IВ’m not the tin dog. I wanna see whatВ’s out there.В”

3000 years later, Mickey Smith strolls out of the TARDIS onto a derelict spaceship. В“ItВ’s so realistic!В” he says, God love him! After В“School ReunionВ” I was really looking forward to seeing Mickey join the TARDIS crew proper, and although he (and Rose) are often neglected in this very Doctor-centric episode he still manages to entertain. His action-man roll had me in hysterics as did the scene with the eye - В“Are you lookinВ’ at me?В” В– brilliant! HeВ’s still scared of his own shadow, but at least heВ’s starting to cut the mustard. IВ’m really looking forward to seeing what he gets up to on the parallel Earth next week; hopefully a two-parter will allocate him a bit more of the action.

Speaking to my sister after watching the episode, she told me that she enjoyed В“The Girl In The FireplaceВ” but found it slow. After the frenetic В“School ReunionВ” I can see where she is coming from, but I found MoffatВ’s quite complicated, more contemplative story every bit as compelling as any other story this season and I certainly do not think it lacked pace. The science-fiction idea behind the episode is fascinating; a 51st century spaceship contains several В“time windowsВ”, each leading directly into various times in one particular 18th century womanВ’s life. For some unknown reason, clockwork robots are constantly harassing this woman, scanning her to see if she is В“completeВ” so they can nick her brain and use it to run their space ship! And just in case that isnВ’t enough for you, Moffat chucks in a horse!

В“YouВ’re not keeping the horse,В” says Rose, scalding the Doctor.
В“I let you keep Mickey!В”

At heart though, “The Girl In The Fireplace” is a love story that pushes fantasy romance to its limits. A Fireplace…“a magic door”… call it what you will; it brings together a lonely Time Lord and a French aristocrat in the most intense, surreal set of circumstances. The first meeting of the Doctor and Reinette (Sophia Myles… David Tennant’s bird) is lifted straight out of a fairytale and then turned on its head. A little girl sleeps with a monster under her bed, and then the man that the “…monsters have nightmares about” comes to her rescue. The ‘monster’ as it were really is the stuff of nightmares. The clockwork robot under Reinette’s bad combines the creepy, relentless tick / tock of a unstoppable machine with a nightmarish masque that plays on all those terrible fears about what lies beneath - these robots are how “The Robots of Death” should have looked; art-deco monstrosities. I also found its voice extremely unsettling – I can’t be sure (though with hindsight it would make sense) but it sounds like Sophia Myles’ voice put through a modulator. What lies beneath the masque, ironically, is actually a thing of beauty to the Doctor’s eyes – a piece of “…space age clockwork.”

В“Reason tells me you cannot be real.В”
В“You donВ’t want to listen to reason.В”

The DoctorВ’s third meeting with Reinette is the pivotal one. Now all grown up, the Madame de Pompadour is a ferociously intelligent, sexy and formidable woman. When she leapt upon the man she had dismissed as an В“imaginary friendВ” I was completely taken aback В– I really didnВ’t see it coming. Even more surprisingly, it worked beautifully. The Doctor clearly enjoyed the kiss; afterwards he was running around like a kid on Christmas Day yelling В“IВ’m the Doctor, and I just snogged the Madame de Pompadour!В” Moreover, ReinetteВ’s forwardness shocked me. Her regal, almost austere countenance sort of tricked me into thinking that she would be prim and proper В– I guess what they say about posh birds is true, even in the 18th century!

В“There comes a time, Time Lord, when every little boy must learn how to dance.В”

It is quite refreshing to see an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor is genuinely smitten with a woman; he may have had, what, 3 snogs in the millennium before this episode but each and every one of those had some kind of get-out clause. В“Oh, she kissed himВ… Oh, he was only sucking the time vortex out of herВ… Oh, she kissed him, and she was possessed anywayВ…В” Moving from such puritanical abstinence to having the Doctor hiding behind a wall spying on his fancy piece is an absolute joy to watch; giving the Doctor a heart (no, not a third one, IВ’m talking figuratively!) opens up so many storytelling possibilities and most interestingly, it really throws open the whole В“what actually is going on with the Doctor and Rose?В” story. The DoctorВ’s mind-meld of sorts with Reinette is another terrific scene as she surprises him by being able to look into his memories. Does this mean she knows who the Doctor is? Is this why he develops such feelings for her? В“ItВ’s more than just a secret isnВ’t it.. В“

I can see why the Doctor would fall for such a woman; after forty-four minutes I was in love with her! Not only is she brilliant, sexy and quite naughty but also sheВ’s a brave woman with some quite romantic ideals. She barges past Mickey through a time window, stepping straight from a palatial room 1752 Versailles into a 51st century spaceship in one beautiful shot. This other world that she sees frightens her, but that only strengthens her resolve В– В“The Doctor is worth the monsters.В” On top of that, she manages to not only grasp the difficult concept that the days of her life are В“pressed togetherВ” from the DoctorВ’s purview, but she accepts it that it is her fate В– her duty В– to walk the В“slower path.В” Her speech in the ballroom when she is assailed my clockwork killers really shows her mettle; even when it appears that the Doctor has forsaken her, she shows nothing but strength. Of course, the Doctor hasnВ’t forsaken herВ…

In any other TV show would you see ever someone come flying through a mirror on a horse? В“WOWВ” simply doesnВ’t do it justice. Fair enough, the clockwork men suddenly ceasing to function because they are suddenly cut off from their ship is a bit rushed and a bit rubbish, but quite frankly it doesnВ’t matter. A horse went through a mirror! The Doctor deliberately marooned himself in 18th century Earth to save Reinette. More to the point, he doesnВ’t seem to care; nor does he seem to spare a though for Rose and Mickey, stuck on that space ship in their far future. The Doctor even seems quite pleased with his fate, even if he is a tad concerned as to where heВ’ll get money from. В“HereВ’s to the slow path!В” He really is getting oldВ…

I thought that maybe Moffat was going to doing something completely madcap like have the Doctor live out the next 3000 years on Earth, and then suddenly show up on the space ship not looking a day older, but thankfully the Doctor managed to use the one surviving time window to get back to the future. He promised that he would come back for Reinette; he promised her that he would show her the starsВ… obviously Time Lords have no concept of monogamy! When the Doctor went back for Reinette, six years had passed and she had died. For the second week in a row, we have a tearjerker ending; this one perhaps even more powerful than the last. As fantastic as the endings to В“School ReunionВ” and В“The Girl In The FireplaceВ” are, IВ’m aching for a good olВ’ fashioned cliffhanger!

And so the Doctor has loved and lost. Rose and Mickey can tell heВ’s upset but they arenВ’t sure why, and so Mickey prudently makes an excuse to leave the Time Lord alone with his thoughts and the letter that Reinette wrote to him. That look on David TennantВ’s face as he extinguishes the time windowВ… Brilliantly written; brilliantly acted; brilliantly shot and produced. The Doctor В– the real weary traveller В– goes on. As the TARDIS dematerialises it all comes together В– the space ship was the SS Madame de PompadourВ… that is why the clockwork repair droids thought only her brain would be compatible. Absurd. Fantastic.

One final note - I donВ’t know whether it was deliberate or not but I think that the placing of this episode in the season is an absolute masterstroke. The clockwork repair droids using the body parts of their crew to repair the ship wonderfully foreshadows В“The Rise of the CybermenВ” В– the amalgamation of flesh and machine.

В“We did not have the partsВ…В”