Day of the Doctor

So. I watched this on Sunday morning Japan time November 24th. I watched ‘The Five-ish Doctors’ with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the thing downloaded, which I enjoyed immensely. It was very funny and a great nod to the past. And then it was time. 50 years in the making – ‘The Day of the Doctor’. It had, sadly, already been spoiled to ribbons. We already knew who John Hurt was ‘ the War Doctor’ – thanks to a brilliant prequel featuring Paul McGann. We already knew that David Tennant and

Tom Baker makes an appearance,.

Billie Piper were returning, so was the Time War, and so was Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. And the Zygons. I wish some of those elements had been kept secret. BUT the worst leak that I had read just by accident was that Tom Baker was making an appearance. And I tried not get spoiled for this one, I really really did.

So with the absence of surprises, I delved into this 76-minute special. I watched it twice on Sunday. The first time left me feeling incredibly flat. Disappointed. Not angry or resentful I should add, I just didn’t connect to the thing. I didn’t enjoy it I guess. I didn’t think it was in anyway bad, but I didn’t like what Steven Moffat had done, the choices he had made along the journey. Which I thought was fine, everyone has different opinions, different expectations and you can’t please everyone, and this time I was one person who it hadn’t hit accord with and such is life.

John Hurt as the Doctor.

I watched it later, in the evening again. And I got more out of it. I didn’t completely change my mind, but I got more out of it. I smiled more. I enjoyed it more. So let’s look closely at what we got.

We got the Time War. I will start with the biggest negative of all perhaps, and that’s the way the Time War was depicted. It’s supposed to a war in TIME, as far as I understood. BUT instead it was merely Daleks and Time Lords shooting at each other. A lot. The argument could be made that it wasn’t waged through time but FOR CONTROL of time, but we had been told before it was the former. The look of what we got was very good, very epic. But I felt letdown as how the Time War had been envisaged.

Billie Piper.

We got the War Doctor. And really this is what the story was all about, and with that I have a big issue. John Hurt plays the Doctor the once. He’s a special guest-star in this episode and he’s centre-stage. To me that was not right. In the broader sense it is about the 10^th and 11^th Doctor who have tried to forget the Time War, and this incarnation of the Doctor. The story is about the Doctor’s self forgiveness. Until they decide to change history. The most powerful and best point of the special is when ten and eleven (now eleven and twelve) stand side by side with the War Doctor to end the time war with this amazing sentient weapon – another aspect I liked. The weapon is played by Billie Piper. More on her later.

But the idea of changing the past, it’s something that’s crept in frequently it seems of late. Just change history. It harks back to ‘The Waters of Mars’ when the 10^th (11^th) Doctor declares he is so powerful history is his to command. And then he realises he’s gone too far. So what is this? And yet history is and isn’t changed. Gallifrey is saved, hidden somewhere, giving the Doctor a quest to find it. It’s beyond timey-wimey now. The Doctor will still say the same person and believe he destroyed Gallifrey and the Daleks, until he reaches the point in his time stream with Matt Smith. Ok. But what about ‘The End of Time’? Did that happen? How does it all fit in? It’s not worth thinking about because nothing will ever make sense again. I liked the Time War idea. I think perhaps we didn’t need to see it. Ever. As much as many fans have been screaming for it. In one foul swoop Moffat has changed the Time War and added another Doctor into mythology.

Which also begs the question – why not use McGann as the War Doctor? I can’t believe people watched the show JUST to see John Hurt, and at least that would be a nod to the older fans in some way. Was Moffat determined that none of the existing Doctors should be shown to do something so bad as destroy Gallifrey? I think it would have worked better with McGann personally, and it wouldn’t have changed what people accepted and Who-history. A perhaps better argument against McGann appearing as the Doctor in ‘Day of the Doctor’ could be that if one was included (as the Doctor) it would be unfair on Davison, McCoy and Colin Baker.

David Tennant and Billie Piper. Great! They weren’t teamed together which was a blessing. Billie was really good as the weapon, creepy and all. David Tennant was somewhat understated, which was nice actually. Moffat decided to give the three Doctors a fair bit of screen time together, unlike previous attempts at multi-Doctor stories, and that really paid dividends. I’m not really sure about the stuff with Elizabeth the first. David Tennant really is the romance Doctor. And now married to Elizabeth the first!

John Hurts’ mocking of Tennant and Smith has made a lot of Who-fans smile, myself included. That was played beautifully. We had the 13 Doctors working together with a great sound-alike of William Hartnell and an ever-so-brief appearance by Peter Capaldi (which I was expecting sadly) as the TARDISes are used to save Gallifrey. We had some wonderfully clever uses of time, having all that time from Hurt’s Doctor through to Smith’s to calculate how to save Gallifrey. Except – Hurt’s and Tennant’s Doctors were supposed to forget everything! Ooops! But what’s a good episode without massive plot holes?

I didn’t like Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and the eagerness to blow up London. The Zygon sub-plot was almost irrelevant and they left the Zygons negotiating with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and forgot about it. Well, unless we see more of it in the future of course. But it didn’t bother me. Nice touches here and the – the use of the Coal Hill School, where Clara now teaches, and I Chesterton as the ‘Chairman of the Governors’ too, lovely touch.

And then we had Tom Baker in the final scene (not as the Doctor), and he was simply magical. There’s not much more I can say about that scene. Doctor Who is going to change from this story, you can be sure about that. The exact direction is known only to Mr Moffatt, but I think it will include Gallifrey. A search for Gallifrey. That could be the focus of Series 8.

The plotting of the special disappointed me, but there was still a lot to like. Some wonderful moments. The Doctor – the Doctors were the focus, not the Daleks or the Zygons, and surely that’s something they got right. I’m a grumpy old man and not everything floated my boat. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. I’m not going to shout with indignation over the parts I didn’t like, or act like ‘HOW DARE HE’ in regards to Mr Moffatt. He’s a fan too, and presumably he wrote what he would have liked to have seen. Which is the only way he could about it. Doctor Who is 50 years old. I love the show. I do not love every single story. Probably though, every single story has a moment, an idea, something I liked. And this, despite the plotting, had plenty.

6.5/10

The End of Time

Well. Yes. Thank goodness that’s over really. I mean there’s stuff to like in there, don’t get me wrong, and it’s very very VERY epic, looks amazing in HD and all that. AND it has Timothy freaking Dalton as Rassilon, which is bloody brilliant, and Bernard Cribbins also being bloody brilliant, but at the end of the day, it’s hard to say that was ‘good’.

It's flippin' Timothy Dalton!

The Master is back, brought to life by some sort of witchcraft it seems which beggars belief honestly what a load of rot. John Simms however gives a great performance over the two parts, that I can’t fault, but the things RTD writes for the Master are not particularly well thought out or interesting. In particular his need to eat, the speed at which he devours food and humans, and more so the entire plotline of turning everyone on Earth into himself. That to me was just a gimmick. Ok, probably not a cheap one, but a gimmick none the less. Then we have Barack Obama’s plan to bring about economic prosperity which is written in as if it was aimed at 6 year olds.

John Simm (the Master) is up to some odd stuff..

We have RTD’s treatment of Donna, who ends up getting married in the end as if that’s the most satisfying way to resolve her character arc. After the brilliant use of Donna over series four, finale excepted, this was really unsatisfying. Then we have the last fifteen minutes where the Doctor, knowing the end is nigh, still has time to go and see everyone he’s met during his tenth incarnation when you just want him to DIE. Well, I did, it went on forever.

Sorry to all those into Doctor Who solely because of David Tennant’s hair.

Then we have the Time Lords. And personally, despite the awesomeness of Timothy FREAKING Dalton, I think they should have stayed locked in the time war. I guess there wasn’t anything bigger to bring back and RTD wanted a big finish for himself and David Tennant. And it is epic. I’ll give him that. But sadly this episode, these episodes, are a reflection of the parts of the era that I didn’t like – the overblown finale solved by touching a button, or in this case, shooting a gun at a machine.

He doesn't want to go. Which is why, I guess, he takes so long to do it!

The Master is just weird in this. Bouncing about in the air like a jack-rabbit, eating a turkey in a few seconds, Rassilon has a bizarre metal glove which zaps people a lot, we have the Naismith guy and his daughter who are barely used and stupid typical RTD characters who merely serve a purpose in the script. BUT it is in HD, and has an awesome sequence where the Doctor pilots the space ship back to Earth and Star Wars memories are invoked as Wilfred Mott shoots a laser cannon at incoming missiles.

And David Tennant. Look, my impression actually improved of the tenth Doctor as he went along, only the first David Tennant series really annoyed me, he was just too smug and a lot of that was to do with Rose. Oh by the way, Bille Piper has clearly had work done on her lips, evident also in series 4. Those lips just looking plain creepy now. I find it very hard to reconcile that the love of the Doctor’s life is a 19 year old girl. I’m sorry, I do and that’s RTD’s fault.

So long Bernard Cribbins, it's been an honour.

Tennant works best with Donna, a wonderful balance between the two lit up the show for a year, and he’s not bad with Bernard Cribbins either, that was a wonderful piece of casting and who thought the ‘companion’ for the last Tennant adventure would be someone approaching 80 years old, and male?

The RTD era is now over. If you take the series finales out and this one, which is effectively the Daddy of all series finales, then I think generally the episodes have been excellent. His casting has been good too, David Tennant being the most popular Doctor ever, and Christopher Eccleston, in my opinion, as perfect a casting job as could be dreamt of. I really loved Eccleston as the Doctor, it was an inspired choice. Billie Piper was a risk that turned out to be genius, and Catherine Tate was even better. Freema Ageyman was less successful, she starts off well but the writing for Martha unfortunately waned, and I think to be honest, some of the things they asked her to do at the end of series 3 and when she returned in series four were a bit beyond her range.

As a writer, opinion is divided on RTD. The man who wrote the each series finale also contributed – ‘Rose’, ‘Midnight’, ‘Turn Left’, and ‘Utopia’ amongst other episodes. All brilliant in my books. He shaped the seasons well, and he got better at it each year. Series arcs, character development, all that stuff he was great at. Was there too strong an emphasis on emotions? Probably. Was the Tennant-Piper pairing grating. Definitely. But the guy brought the show back. He made it a hit. I forgive him his foibles. All of them.

As for ‘The End of Time’, I wish I could give it a great score. But it really is awful!

2/10

The Stolen Earth, Journey's End & The Next Doctor

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End

By now I know what to expect with the series finales. They are big, very very big. A little reminiscent, and generally plotwise a massive disappointment. So, keeping that in mind you can’t be disappointed with The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, because they merely ran true to form. In fact, they were the pinnacle of overblown, over the top stories laced with awful plotting and a very drawn out ending.

Although there are a few specials to go, you could be forgiven for seeing this one as Russel T Davies’ and David Tennant’s swansong. We even got a regeneration of sorts! What really got me was how unsatisfying the resolution was. Which is RTD’s forte it seems, building up on a huge scale and then not really having anywhere to go except a big reset button or exploring the realms of incredulity.

So. We have planets throughout the universe disappearing, and at the start of the story the Earth becomes one of them. Why the TARDIS would not be taken with the Earth is anyone’s guess, it had landed there and so being left in the empty space when the Earth is stolen made no rightly sense to me.

Not only do we have a Dalek army, a Dalek supreme, but Dalek Sek and Davros are back too. Julian Bleach’s Davros is wonderful, perfect casting as the mad creator of the Daleks, and he looks fantastic, true to the original, so a big thumbs up for that. All the important characters are back for the finale – the characters that have made the first four years of the new series. Rose, Mickey, Rose’s Mum (grooooooan), Martha, Captain Jack, Sarah Jane (always wonderful to see her) and Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister. They all come up with ingenious ways to destroy the Earth so the Daleks can’t have it, but it all comes to naught in the end.

Because this series is about Donna. And she’s been saying she’s no-one, so it must be her who saves the day. So here’s the thing that killed the story for me. Donna-Doctor. Doctor-Donna. Whichever it was. As the TARDIS is seconds away from destruction, Donna touches the Doctor’s hand in a jar (this is the hand he lost in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ by the way) and creates a new Doctor, combined with Donna. So yes, we have two David Tennants! Then Donna herself inherits the Doctor’s mind, combined with hers, and presses a few buttons and stops everything.

Let’s look past the fact that pressing buttons is a very weak way to resolve the situation, and consider then that it is NOT Donna that saves the day, but the Doctor-Donna. It’s nothing inherit in Donna perse, but the combination of minds which allows her to be the heroine. For me, that defeated the purpose of having her being the key to it all. BIG TIME.

That for me was the single biggest issue with this epic story which looks great although it’s full of many other crappy elements like the Oster-Haagen key, and the end of the first part where the Doctor starts to regenerate and then doesn’t cause he didn’t want to. Then we have the ending with Rose. Rose is sent back to the alternate Earth and given the new version of the Doctor, who is incidentally human. I’m sorry, but AS IF. Let’s also look past the age difference and oh so much that’s wrong with the idea of a relationship between the two, he’s a friggin’ facsimile. It’s dreadful, awful, shite.

The ending doth drag too, and all we really needed to see was what happened to Donna, who has her memory of the Doctor wiped because otherwise it will kill her. And this is really sad. And again unsatisfying for this viewer. In fact, I may have preferred her to actually die. Dalek Caan is continually saying one of the companions is going to die, and then no-one does.

So, in short, grand on scale, vision and design, short on plot and satisfaction. In short, the antithesis of every series finale RTD has given us.

3/10

The Next Doctor

And we’re back with another Christmas special, starring David Morrissey as Jackson Lake, who thinks he’s the Doctor with his faithful companion Rosita (played by the brilliant Velile Tshabalala) facing off against Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan) who is equally brilliant. In fact, the these actors make the show wonderful, seriously wonderful.

The first three quarters of the episode is just a great romp, with some clever twists. I love the idea of the Doctor thinking that Jackson must simply be a future incarnation, and then he has a sonic screwdriver which is just… a screwdriver! Brilliant! And the TARDIS is a hot air balloon! Wonderful stuff! Then we have the Cybermen, and their ‘Cybershades’ very strange creatures with cyber-faces but a sort of shaggy black carpet as the costume. Ok, they look pretty crappy.

The show is full of wonderful moments and reveals, it’s truly magical in places, sad in others. Highly entertaining. It was the best Christmas special of all.

Until… the Cyberking. Oh gawd. What were they thinking? A huge Cyberman walking around London destroying everything with like a control deck and Miss Hartigan at the controls. She appears to be an early feminist too, but the script doesn’t treat her well which I didn’t like and seems almost anti-feminist in the way it portrays her. It looks a bit rubbish this CyberKing, but in concept it’s even worse. It’s a kind of lame concept which may have been used because RTD couldn’t think of anything else when faced with the question – ‘What are the Cybermen up to?’.

The story is the first to be shot in HD, and it looks magnificent. The improvement in picture quality is massive. I enjoyed that aspect and the performances of the guest cast. And the first three quarters is pretty awesome. Hard to get past the CyberKing though…

6/10

Fear Her, Army of Ghosts & Doomsday

Fear Her

Ooooooh a box aren't we clever?

Another episode which gets a lot of stick from the fans, ‘Fear Her’ was written by Matthew Graham. Whilst I agree it really doesn’t work, I have to say I liked the idea behind it – a tiny creature lost from the rest of its kind. It’s different. However, the setting is London a few years in the (then) future, on the opening day of the 2012 London Olympics.

Here comes the big bad!

It’s not set some time interesting basically. It could be set in a special time in the past, or in the far future, or even the present day which makes a threat feel more real, but there’s no real reason to set a story six years in the future. The world is basically the same, they’ve arrived on a suburban street but not with any established characters, so we don’t see into Rose’s future, it simply appears to be a gimmick connected to the Olympic games.

It’s not a comedy, in fact it deals with some very dark themes – child abuse, and I’m not sure Doctor Who is the appropriate show to be bringing up these issues on. I refer to Chloe’s (Abisola Agbaje) father, who is dead, but brought to life by Chloe because everything she draws is brought to life. In fact I had a similar story where pictures were brought to life by a very curious demon, named Dean. It wasn’t nearly as dark as this story.

The Doctor lights the Olympic flame. Makes sense to me.

Then we have the Tennant and Piper double act on song with their massive egos barely being contained on widescreen. This culminates with the Doctor lighting the Olympic flame in the stadium and feeling damned pleased about it himself. The Doctor has always had a big ego, but the way David Tennant has expressed it in the series has been a big issue for me. Rose does nothing to tone it down, in fact she is always encouraging him.

So basically, I liked the central concept. A small lifeform empathising with Chloe, and joining with her. I didn’t like the way the Doctor (and to a lesser extent Rose) pushed his way through the story telling people what to do. The setting was uninspiring and the material does fill the 45 minutes well.

3/10

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

Rose and her Mum. 

The series finale sees the return of the Cybermen, of Mickey, of Pete Tyler and the Daleks. Yes, Doctor Who fans can go ‘squeeee!’ because finally their wt dreams have come true – the Daleks fighting the Cybermen. Who will win? Well, as it turns out the Daleks are basically invincible and the Cybermen are not. So in the end it’s really like the Daleks fighting humans. Which in the end is disappointing.

They're back!

I liked elements, I disliked elements, I don’t know if it was better or worse than the previous finale. There’s less of a build to this one, besides a throw-away line in ‘The Satan Pit’ where Rose is told she is going to die soon. Naturally this is a play on words, the episode starts with Piper’s short monologue about this being the story of how she died, except it isn’t. Which in some ways is a disappointment, not because I wanted her to die, but that’s where you think the story is going and the

And so are they!

way they get out of it – she ends up in a different dimension – is really a ‘cheat’ in my book.

We start with the Doctor and Rose arriving on modern day earth with Jackie Tyler telling them that Rose’s Grandfather appears as a ghost to her and they discover that ghosts are regularly appearing everywhere nowadays. Again, I hate to harp on about this, but Davies makes Jackie out to be a complete moron. And then he plays on that! The Doctor is then making jokes about her intelligence and her age. When she comes face to face with Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwell) from the other dimension, she keeps asking about how rich he is. It’s truly awful. She’s written as a dumb, old blonde. And it becomes really hard to believe Pete is in love with her. She could have been written as a strong single mother, but she never has been. Anyways, enough about her.

See ya round like a rissole!

The Cybermen have seeped through from the other dimension via the void because of the Daleks ‘void-ship’. There are four Daleks inside, the ‘cult of Skaro’. Inside the ship they have the ‘Genesis Arc’. An interesting title, a Time Lord ‘device’, it is in fact a prison full of millions of Daleks. Groan. Why call it the Genesis Ark? It makes no sense. It has nothing to do with beginnings at all. Just a cool-sounding title.

So we are treated to Daleks massacring Cybermen in the great battle which for this reason is disappointing. I would have expected to win, but if it was going to be so easy why bother showing it. Then Davies gives the Daleks a bunch of cheesy lines ‘This isn’t war, this is pest control.’ for example.

And it's goodbye to Rose as well. 

Finally, the Doctor has to close the gap to the void and send all the Daleks and Cybermen into it. All except Rose head to the alternate Earth, Rose stays with the Doctor. But in an act of heroism, she has to pull the lever back to the central position to keep the door open, and is rescused by Pete Tyle (no idea how) at the final millisecond and has to live the rest of her life in another dimension.

The Doctor makes one last – projected – visit to see her and we get a final scene full of tears. It’s sad and dramatic, and a little bit overdone. It’s not too bad and after the ride of the previous two series, we had to expect something along these lines.

The story works on most levels, but it’s not brilliant either. I felt it didn’t look as impressive as I expected it to.

6/10

The Idiot's Lantern, The Impossible Planet, The Satan Pit and Love and Monsters

The Idiot’s Lantern

The Doctor and Rose find themselves in London in the early 50s for at the time of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. This story is a strange mix of good and bad elements. I really loved the look and feel of it for the most part. The use of old black and white television sets was great, and the woman cast to play ‘the wire’ was perfect casting (Maureen Lipman). The look of people with stolen faces was great too, and then Rose getting her face stolen as well was good.

Eddie Connolly.

On the other side of the coin, the Doctor and Rose, after Mickey has just left, don’t seem to have paid him a second thought. This was a big issue for me, especially with Rose. In fact they just arrive, on a scooter of all things, with the Doctor’s hair looking more ridiculous than ever, in a sort of self congratulatory glow that they are so clever, proceed to barge into someone’s house and make snide remarks about the way flags are hung and judge a man they just met in three seconds flat as being an arsehole.

Which, ok he is but that could be put down to writing more than anything else – Gatiss wrote an extremely one-dimensional character in Eddie Connolly, the father of the household. It’s a bit sad to realise the father that way. Gatiss however shows how to use a 45-minute episode pretty effectively. Set up the issue, investigate, on the verge of finding out what it is, add peril to the companion who by the time her face is stolen I was so happy for her to be out of the story for a while, Doctor gets angry, figures out a plan, puts the plan into action and wins.

And really in 45 minutes if you can do that effectively you’ve done well. And he pretty much does that here. Do we really understand what ‘the wire’ is? No. This is probably my biggest sticking point. It sucks people’s faces from them, that much I understand. And the faces are trapped. But why? I wasn’t sure if their brains or part thereof were taken too and why and what the whole point was to it, but hey that’s every second Doctor Who tale, right?

Anyways……

6/10

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit

Toby gets nasty.

This story seemed to continue on in the same vein with the Doctor and Rose being all superior and what not. It’s a very odd story with some of the creepiest and scariest Doctor Who of all time, balanced somewhat by the preposterous and unlikely. So basically, who is the monster, the villain of the piece? Well basically, it’s the devil. Yes, so ummm right. But is it the real devil? Well we won’t get into specifics as the writer didn’t see the need to.

End of the road for Scoot.

Matt Jones wrote the tale of a group of humans stuck on an asteroid outside a black hole. The beast is trapped in a sort of prison inside the rock. The humans have come because somehow they determined there was a vast force of untapped enemy below the surface. Yeah can’t see that somehow but what the hey, like Alice I try to believe three amazing things before breakfast.

The sets are very very good. It’s a sort of kit-built base which to be honest I have no idea how they got

Ooooooodear

to the asteroid, or as the title suggests, planet. I mean the rocket ship seemed barely big enough to take the people there. And in the opening minutes the Doctor is separated from the TARDIS which was inside a section broken off from the base in an earthquake. Except that it turns up near the end of the story just when the Doctor needed it despite it making no sense whatsoever.

Well, if it isn't... ummmm.... you know who!

Then the Doctor is faced with a huge devil, whilst the mind has broken free. It attaches itself to the Ood, a rather nice creation who are basically slaves, creatures from another world which look like they eat spaghetti every night and can’t clean it up. But they are rather good and very creepily used when the beast is controlling them. The beast also infects Toby, played by Will Thorp. An archaeologist. Ancient writing appears over his face and body and again, they achieve some pretty awesome-looking stuff.

James Strong does a great job directing this story. It’s pacey and scary, and also exciting too. The script’s just a bit stupid, that’s all. Not that badly written, but the central idea didn’t resonate with me at all I’m afraid.

5.5/10

Love and Monsters

Peter Kay in his Sunday finest. Well, not quite.

‘Love and Monsters’, by Russel T Davies, is the first ‘Doctor-lite’ story. Basically, in lieu of the heavy schedule on David Tennant and Billie Piper, it was decided that one story per season would not feature the main characters a lot. This probably stems back to the first series when Eccleston decided not to take the option to extend his contract due to a variety of issues, the enormous time-commitment being one.

Elton and Ursula.

So what we get is this story, a strange and different beast with an emphasis on comedy and a monster created by the winner of a BBC competition, the ‘Absorbaloff’, played with relish by Peter Kay. Although this is not a well-loved tale, I really enjoyed it. It helps that I rather like ELO, but I found the characters very endearing, especially Elton (Marc Warren) and Ursula (Shirley Henderson) and it seemed to be a bit of a homage to Doctor Who fans. Of course, it could easily be taken as taking the piss out of them too, but I don’t believe that was the intention in this case. Otherwise Davies would have written them as unlikeable when clearly the audience is meant to empathise with them, which I did.

It’s not a ground-breaking story, but it is heartfelt. It’s a rather sad ending really and a little bit of a worry when Elton talks about having a love life with Ursula – who by that stage has been turned into a slab of concrete. There’s not a lot I imagine the love life consisting of, except for one thing… But still, it’s a lot of fun. Kudos for Peter Kay running around in that monster suit which leaves almost nothing to the imagination.

If I do have a criticism, it’s of, sigh, Jackie Tyler. Camille Coduri returns as Jackie, who Elton has an … ‘encounter’ with. In fact she tries to seduce young Elton. It’s again poor writing for this character, making her little more than a joke. Usually she is just written as stupid, and pushy. Why Rose couldn’t have a smart and understanding mother I don’t know. It’s not Coduri’s fault. She’s playing what was written. It’s just disappointing that this character couldn’t have written as a more positive role.

7.5/10

School Reunion, The Girl in the Fireplace, Rise of the Cybermen & The Age of Steel.

School Reunion

Anthony Head AND Elizabeth Sladen. Bloody brilliant.

Toby Whithouse gets thrown the baton on this one and well, he certainly got given a lot to go on with! The return of a past companion in Sarah Jane Smith (played by the late Elizabeth Sladen) and K-9, and a special guest star in Rupert Giles himself -  Anthony Head. The story is somewhat light again, but these are forty-five minute episodes and a self-contained story with characters from the past returning and the like could hardly have a million plot-twists, could it?

K-9 is back too!

It’s set at a school where these evil aliens – Krillitanes – are making the students smarter via oil the chips are cooked in, so that they can uncover the Skasis Paradigm, and have control over the building blocks of the universe. Does that make any sense at all? Nope. And I would have loved to have seen Anthony Head do more but them’s the breaks in a 45 minute story. It’s all rather fun and enjoyable, and feels like it could have easily been made into a two-part story.

We address some important issues too – what happens to the companions when the Doctor moves on? The idea that Sarah kept waiting and waiting is very sad indeed. The Krillitanes are bat-people, completely CGI which is, as usual, obvious, but not a bad design all told. There are some creepy teachers at that school as well, not just the headmaster. It’s well directed and well-cast. Just a pity about the plot in retrospect.

7/10

The Girl in the Fireplace

See, barmy crazy ideas CAN work. This episode, penned by Steven Moffat, is a truly beautifully written and realised episode, one of the best since the series returned in 2005. We have a spaced ship with doorways linked to 19^th century France following the life of the mistress to the King, Madame Du Pompidou (Reinette), played perfectly by Sophia Myles. The space ship is trying to repair itself using human parts, but still need a controlling computer, and it believes that Renette’s brain at age 37 (the age of the space ship) is what will complete the repairs. The doorways to her life are scattered through her timeline.

Sophia Myles

It looks beautiful. The whole story. We have a horse roaming around a space ship in the far future, how cool is that? The palace in France is glorious in its detail, and the clockwork robots which are sent to France to find the brain at the right time are a superb piece of design. Mickey has joined Rose and the Doctor in their travels which is nice because Noel Clarke is fantastic, and the biggest thing in the episode is that the Doctor falls in love.

Yes, the Doctor gets to snog Madame Du Pompidou. How about that? And the series didn’t crumble and fall down because of it. And then in the end he returns to late to take her with him in the TARDIS, she has died – far too young. It’s a very sad moment. David Tennant plays it all very well, that seems to be his ‘thing’ – he is the romantic Doctor. Perhaps.

The Doctor is 'wowed' by the clockwork roboty-things.

It’s very hard to comment further on these single episodes. This crazy plot works. There are only two characters with much relevance to the story beyond the Doctor and his team – Renette and the King of France. Well, we also have ‘young’ Renette, and Renette’s friend. The design is perhaps the best the series has ever seen, it really blew me away. It’s a brilliant 45 minutes of TV.

9.5/10

The Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

We are whisked away to a parallel world to see a new Cyber-race created at the hands of John Lumic (Roger Lloyd-Pack) for this two-parter. It’s filled with a lot of excitement and more Cybermen than we have ever seen on screen before. The Cybermen have had a redesign, unlike the Daleks which basically had the same design before but just tweaked a bit.

Noel Clarke as Mickey.

The Cybermen design, whilst perhaps being better than the way we last saw them in ‘Silver Nemesis’, didn’t really grab I have to say. What was clever was the use of ‘computer speak’ in their dialogue (their new catch phrase is ‘delete’ rather than ‘excellent!’) and their wish to ‘upgrade’ everyone, back to concept of ‘you will be like us’ which is where they started back in ‘The Tenth Planet’ all those years ago.

They are Cybermen from a parallel universe, we must remember that! So

Roger Lloyd-Pack

they will of course be a bit different, and this lot originated on Earth rather than Mondas. They did an interesting parallel Earth – to a point. We had Zeppelins in the sky and no royal family, instead Great Britain had a President. However, the idea of bringing the Cybermen back via another dimension to me was pointless. If you are in a parallel world, you want a story exploring how the society is different and what is therefore WRONG with that society. If you want to take it up a notch, what is RIGHT in the other dimension which is WRONG is ours. Explore the paradoxes, rather than just ‘Rose’s father is alive and is a success’.

Which was nice, because Shaun Dingwell is fantastic as Peter Tyler, and to be honest I was happy to see Jackie turned into a Cyber-woman. That Rose and Pete should care so much about her to go and save here with basically no chance in hell was mystifying, she is bloody awful and instead of reversing that for this episode, she is WORSE!

Mickey leaves in this story. He didn’t travel with the Doctor and Rose long, did he? I make that… two stories! I am going to miss Mickey, Noel Clarke has been the highlight of the second series thus far and am sorry to see him go. Of course, he might yet come back. Lovely that he finds his Gran, and amusing that the parallel Mickey is called Ricky – the name the Ninth Doctor always used for Mickey. I still find it a bit hard to believe he would stay, but he did have his Gran to look after, who had died in the ‘main’ universe.

The Cybermen stomp around a lot in this one. The suit is a combination of the older design, say from ‘The Moonbase’, and a storm trooper from Star Wars. They make a lot of noise when they walk and electrocute people by touching them this time. That wasn’t very convincing to this viewer to be honest. But, such is life.

The show must go on, sans Mickey now it seems. This story saves itself with Graeme Harper as the director bringing his famed energy to the show, so it keeps moving and is strong on action. The only director to return to the show, it’s great that Harper is still alive and kicking and really adding something more to the Doctor Who legend.

6.5/10