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

Planet of the Dead & Waters of Mars

Planet of the Dead

So they had an Easter Special in 2010. Well, I guess they had to. This story is a mixture of good and bad again. I think it look pretty fantastic, at least the stuff shot in the UAE in the desert certainly does, and for the most part being HD makes it all worthwhile. However, the CGI version of the red double decker bus looks pretty poor.

Lee Evans

RTD seems to have started with the idea of a London bus lost in the desert on a far-off planet. Ok. but then he needed more and besides vision, I’m not really sure what this story offers. Ok, it offers Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza, who is friggin awesome and I so wish had stayed as a companion. She is a cat burglar who starts the episode off by floating down on a wire and stealing a valuable gold cup from a museum. Doesn’t get much cooler than that?

But the plot is up to pretty much

nothing at all sadly. A massive swarm of metal creatures go from planet to planet through wormholes eating planets dry and leaving them deserts. Ok. But they really stretched it out to a full hour I felt, it could have been more effectively told in 45 minutes. I guess they had a lot of footage from the UAE and they didn’t want to waste it. We have a bunch of characters trapped on the bus which are quite under-utilised too, some of them were really interesting, especially the elderly couple. They basically just wait on the bus whilst the Doctor and Christina try to solve everything.

Then we have Lee Evans giving a wonderful performance as Malcolm which added a lot to the story, but for 60 minutes it did seem a little lacking to be fair.

6.5/10

The Waters of Mars

After watching this story through to the end, I have to say that it contains probably the most disturbing image of any Doctor Who story I have seen. Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) takes her own life, she shoots herself. Although we don’t see the moment she shoots herself, we do see her pull out the gun, and we do see a flash as the gun is fired. I’m going to say that considering the intended audience is families, and particularly children, I don’t believe this was appropriate for the show and I am left feeling very uneasy about it.

The episode itself is somewhat disturbing and extremely dark in nature. The idea of water that kills, or transforms, the ideas behind the tale I think are very strong and we have an almost ‘Gerry Davis-esque’ crew on the Mars base who are from all countries of the world with lots of accents. Ok, it’s mostly limited to Europe to be fair.

It’s also the old ‘tried and true’ base under siege storyline, and it’s tried and true because it works. There’s

The Doctor and Adelaide Brooke

wonderful elements emphasising the inevitability of what is going to happen, juxtaposed against the Doctor’s determination that sod it all, he’s basically God and if he wants to change established history then he will! Despite the dangers, as Adelaide’s daughter is inspired by her to become a pioneer of space travel herself.

So this is where it all gets a bit screwy, and the Doctor comes across as so angry. I’m not sure I bought it, and that’s not because of the performances but because of who the Doctor is and has been. He certainly was more chipper in the previous two specials. And we are left wondering how the two characters who survive, Mia and Yuri, could possibly integrate back into life on Earth, let alone explain how they got back home from Mars.

It is great to see Australia actor Peter O’Brien in the cast, a veteran of many Australian shows. I think the story was very solid, the effects and the direction (directed by Graeme Harper) were outstanding. A bit of a hard episode to judge. It’s a bit preachy in places and I wasn’t convinced with the way RTD wrote the Doctor in places.

7/10

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

The Sontaran Stratagem, The Poison Sky, The Doctor's Daughter & The Unicorn and the Wasp

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

Sontar HA!

Helen Raynor gets asked back to write another two-part adventure, this time with the responsibility of bringing back both UNIT and the Sontarans. Throw Martha into the mix too, a teenage brainiac, oh and a second Martha, and you have… a bit of a mess really.

I’m not sure what this story is.  Is it trying to pay homage to the classic series? At points it feels like it is. It’s certainly better than Raynor’s first Doctor Who tale, but it still fails to hit the mark in my opinion. It begins at the end of ‘Planet of the Ood’ when the Doctor gets a call from Martha, who says ‘I’m bringing you back to Earth’. It’s a dreadful DREADFUL line. Martha is written differently, rather like she was in ‘Last of the Time Lords’, in this one. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem to be in Martha’s character, she’s just not believable.

The Sontarans are rather good. We have Christopher Ryan who appeared as Kiv in ‘Mindwarp’ as their leader Starl, and he is fantastic, the makeup and mask work is also superb. Dan Starkey takes the role of Commander Skorr and makes a great Sontaran, but all the other Sontarans (and we see more than we have every seen before) are helmeted. So we just see two potato heads.

There is some nice moments with Donna’s mother and her grandfather, Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbens) when Donna goes back to see them. In contrast to Martha’s and Rose’s first absences, Donna’s mother has hardly noticed she’s been away.

It’s the plot and the resolution the principally lets the story down, along with Martha and her double, which I mostly put down to the writing, although I think we see that Freema Ageymann is not as versatile as she needs to be too. The Sontarans are using a device connected to half the world’s cars to convert the atmosphere so they can turn Earth into a cloning planet. They have a device which stops guns, which is good for them I guess as they appear to go down pretty easily when shot.

Then the Doctor finds a device which sets the gassy clouds alight without burning anything else thus destroying the Sontarans plans. Then Luke Rattigen (played by Ryan Samson, an American boy genius and a VERY annoying character) manages to rig the transmat so that he switches places with the Doctor in the Sontaran space ship and presses the destruct button. Meh, sorry but meh. That’s all I can say to those plot points. Add the doppelganger of Martha, it seems like a plot written for a different alien race and then adapted to try and fit in for Sontarans. Poorly.

4.5/10

The Doctor’s Daughter

Georgia Moffat

Woah. Wham bam that’s the quickest moving start to a story ever. The Doctor, Donna and Martha are whisked away to a far off planet. The TARDIS has detected the Doctor’s DNA there or something, the explanation is retconned into the end of the episode and makes no sense at all. Anyways the TARDIS speeds to this planet, where the Doctor and co. bump into some humans, a sample is taken from the Doctor and a sort of clone warrior is grown in 2.1 seconds flat, and the Doctor’s daughter is born.

The Hath.

The humans are fighting the Hath, a sort of fish race with a bottle of liquid attached to their mouths. They looked pretty good I thought. We have a runaround 45-minute episode where the humans and Hath all try to get to the ‘source’ first which they think is a weapon. They have apparently forgotten why they came to the planet in the first place, and appear to have been locked in war for years. Turns out it was only seven days. The source is in fact a terra forming device.

Anyways. There is a focus on killing and the fact that the Doctor never would. Which is quite nice I guess. Catherine Tate is great as Donna, who is proving an excellent foil for Tennant, and as the Doctor’s daughter Jenny, Georgia Moffat (daughter of Peter Davison) couldn’t have been more perfectly cast. And they brought her back to life at the end too just for the hell of it.

and... RUN!

Martha, on the other hand, is surplus to requirements and as she leaves at the end of the tale I have no idea why they put her in this one. She does have her own storyline but it all could have easily been covered with a bit of plot-restructuring.  The sets are underground tunnels, so sort of stock-standard I guess, but they are pretty good. The plot makes no rightly sense at all, despite the war and how quickly they can grow new generations of humans. So it’s another mixed bag. Donna works well with Doctor as I said, and with Jenny. That’s the highlight and here we can really see that the decision to bring Catherine Tate back as the companion was in fact an inspired choice.

6.5/10

The Unicorn and the Wasp

Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Christie.

The Doctor and Donna go back in time and find themselves at a party with Agatha Christie, and very quickly embroiled in a murder mystery! That was probably not that of a twist, right? This story is enormous fun and one I completely enjoyed. It sees some great guest appearances from Christopher Benjamin in his third Doctor Who tale, his last being ‘The Talons of Weng Chiang’. Felicity Kendall also guest stars meaning the principle two characters from ‘The Good Life’ have now appeared in Doctor Who. It would be fair to say this was the more successful of the two appearances (Richard Briers appeared in ‘Paradise Towers’).

There’s not a lot to say. It was an awful lot of fun from start to finish, and includes a very funny and brilliant played scene by David Tennant and Catherine Tate when the Doctor has been poisoned and he’s trying to flush the poison out. The confrontation scene when the truth is revealed has a lovely lot of twists to it and is superbly played by all this was a wonderful ensemble piece. Especially well played was Agatha Christie herself, Fenella Woolgar.

The Doctor fights the poison - best scene of the episode!

Well done to Gareth Roberts who wrote this one, the idea of a wasp morphing into a human may seem a bit silly, but quite frankly the odd dose of silly does no-one any harm at all.

8.5/10

Partners in Crime, The Fires of Pompeii & Planet of the Ood

Partners in Crime

So, when I heard that Donna would be the companion for the fourth series (2008) I was somewhat aggrieved because to be frank she was pretty hard to stomach in ‘The Runaway Bride’, but all in all you have to give it a go, right? So I am prepared to see how it all pans out over series four. ‘Partners In Crime’, by Russel T Davies, is the series opener, reuniting Donna (Catherine Tate) with the Doctor as they try to solve the mystery of Adipose Industries, a company that specialises in weight loss.

So, when I heard that Donna would be the companion for the fourth series (2008) I was somewhat aggrieved because to be frank she was pretty hard to stomach in ‘The Runaway Bride’, but all in all you have to give it a go, right? So I am prepared to see how it all pans out over series four. ‘Partners In Crime’, by Russel T Davies, is the series opener, reuniting Donna (Catherine Tate) with the Doctor as they try to solve the mystery of Adipose Industries, a company that specialises in weight loss.

The plot is somewhat lightweight, but there’s some good comedic moments as Donna and the Doctor keep investigating but not quite bumping into each other. Donna is not the normal companion, I’ll give you that, and perhaps it will work. Eventually they find each other, solve it all and Donna declares she is going with the Doctor who doesn’t seem so convinced. David Tennant is rather good in this one, and there are some great scenes, especially on the window-cleaner’s lift. The Adipose themselves don’t look very convincing, again it is a clear case of CGI, and I think again because we know how it’s done, it makes it harder to believe.

It’s not one of the stronger opening episodes, and like ‘New Earth’, it aims to be comedic before anything else. Nevertheless it is pretty enjoyable, and Donna comes across as less angry and more excitable which I think was a good decision for the character. We will see how it all progresses. Oh and yes, spoiler alert, we have the mysterious appearance of Rose (Billie Piper) for a brief second at the end of the episode, presumably that’s something to do with the season arc…

6.5/10

Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott.

The Fires of Pompeii

Peter Capaldi.

The Doctor takes Donna to ancient Rome for her first proper trip in the TARDIS, except it isn’t Rome, it’s Pompeii the day before Vesuvius erupts. A great idea for a story. However, it’s a bit hit and miss. It does have some great moments, in particular where Donna points out things to the Doctor about himself (specifically saving the family in the end).

Hello there!

I’m not sure all the elements work well together. We have people turning to stone for example, a sisterhood, and the creatures from Pirovillia, a planet which disappeared. The Doctor is then responsible for the eruption, which destroys the fire monsters. It’s an exploration of cause and effect, of being part of history rather than changing history. It’s interesting that the Doctor needs Donna to spend the whole story badgering him before he will considering saving one family from the ravages of the volcano.

The monsters are under-utilised and under-explained, as is the sisterhood. Perhaps that’s a pitfall of a 45-minute episode, you can’t fully explore or exploit elements of the plot. I loved the idea of a marble circuit. I despised the use of accents in this story, although the idea that Donna sounded Welsh is quite funny.

Some good guest performances here, including Peter Capaldi who is going to be the 12^th Doctor, and Karen Gillan in a small role as one of the sisterhood, who apparently is the next companion come series 5… The story is ok, a bit mad which is fine, but also a bit of a hodge-podge of elements.

6/10

Planet of the Ood

Tim McInnery

I liked ‘Planet of the Ood’ quite a lot. Not just because it refers to the Ood being related to the Sensorites, of the appearance of Percy from Black Adder (the brilliant Tim McInnery). This is quite beautiful at times, and horrid at others. The sad song that the Ood sing is very moving, and great work from Murray Gold. Catherine Tate cries when she hears it as Donna, she is really growing on me. This story pulls no punches, it is quite clearly anti-slavery, and you could even say anti-human.

An Ood shows the Doctor his 'hind-brain'.

It doesn’t all work. When McInnery’s character turns into an Ood in the end, that just doesn’t right true or even as a fitting resolution for the character. But the idea of three parts of the brain is quite original (as far as I know), the poor having to carry their hind-brain in their hands, their connection to the collective brain, it’s all great plotting.

When the Ood turn rabid, when they start killing, that’s really scary stuff as well. Kudos to the writer, Keith Temple, for turning out such a great tale. The Oodsphere looks beautiful too.

8.5/10

42, Human Nature, The Family of Blood & Blink

42

Whilst this is not a great episode, it’s somewhat of an improvement from the previous three at least. Chris Chibnall wrote this one, and the concept is good I think – 42 minutes to live, the episode to play out in real-time, inspired by the show ‘24’. The sets are very good, the casting is solid, there’s a throwback in concept to ‘Planet of Evil’, Martha has some nice moments, and it looks good.

It’s got issues too, the idea of having to answer trivia to get through a whole bunch of doors grated with me and seemed to be a gimmick. There was some stuff I just couldn’t believe – the Doctor going outside in a space ship so close to the sun to save Martha for example. I liked the idea of the sun being alive, which is why they couldn’t leave with part of the sun on board the ship, but I was annoyed that the sun was then portrayed as evil and given a nasty catchphrase – ‘burn with me!’. As creepy as the phrase was, it just didn’t seem right to me.

Freema Ageyman hasn’t had the sort of character development that Billie Piper got. Her family has thus far been just used as tools to tell the plotlines, rather than developed characters like (as much as I disliked her) Jackie Tyler. Martha’s Mum is being used somehow by Mr Saxon to find out information on Martha and presumably the Doctor. Martha speaks on the phone to her mum a number of times in this episode, revealing it’s election day in Britain and presumably Mr Saxon is up for office. We’ve seen the ‘vote Saxon’ signs here and there too.

What it’s all about is perhaps more interesting than the stories we’re being told. ‘42’ feels like the Impossible Planet in many ways, the sets look similar, but I think the idea is better and far less… stupid. I wish the writer had chosen to make the sun more concerned about losing part of itself and less about being evil and creepy though.

6.5/10

Human Nature/The Family of Blood

Paul Cornell’s two-parter came from the book he wrote for the Seventh Doctor in the New Adventures series back in the 1990s. It’s set in 1913 at a boy’s school and on the whole is very good. It is certainly down on things that pissed me off or made me squirm. The only thing is, I’m not sure about the ending, and I’m not sure it fully fills the two episodes.

Paul Cornell is an excellent writer. He sets things up well, his character writing is top-notch, his ideas are wonderful. The idea that ‘what if the Doctor wasn’t the Doctor, what if he was human’ is a great place to start from. David Tennant gives his best performance here. Martha, sadly, is a bit generic. We have scarecrows as monsters, lovely! What more could you want?

The setting is perfect, and it’s shot wonderfully. They must have had a lot of late nights making this one! Some very good casting – especially Thomas Sangster as Tim Latimer. When you have young characters, it’s very important to find the right kid to play them! As Joan Redfern, John Smith’s ‘love-interest’, Jessica Hines does very well indeed. All Martha can do is regret that he’s not falling in love with her, which I must admit isn’t the strongest of concepts for a companion.

Thomas Sangster

The second part starts well, and the first part (Human Nature) is excellent TV, but after the battle at the school, it seems very stretched out for the last 25 minutes or so. It’s fine action and drama, as John Smith battles with the choice to open the watch. The Doctor is contained inside this fob watch and when opened John Smith will become the Doctor again, and John Smith is terrified. It’s wonderfully played by both Tennant and Jessica Hines, however it probably didn’t need to go for quite so long.

Then the ending. The Doctor was hiding from the Family of Blood as John Smith to spare them. Because in the end he imprisons all four members of the family in different places. One in a mirror – no, every mirror, one as a scarecrow forever, one in the heart of a star… I didn’t feel satisfied by that ending and I don’t like the idea, suddenly, that the Doctor is THAT powerful, or indeed it would seem magical too. Then what’s the point? He doesn’t beat them by doing something clever, or fighting them, in fact we don’t even see how it’s done. It’s just done, like magic. Well if it’s that easy, I’m surprised anyone goes up against him!

Despite those two issues, and especially on the strength of ‘Human Nature’, I still think this is a great story. It goes to show resolutions are hard to write well.

7.5/10

Blink

Steven Moffat’s contribution to series three is this story, the ‘Doctor-lite’ episode for the season. And we don’t see a lot of the Doctor or Martha at all, in a lot of ways it doesn’t feel like you’re watching an episode of Doctor Who to be honest.

The main character for this story is Sally Sparrow, played by Carey Mulligan (who would have made a great companion) who sneaks into an old abandoned house to take photographs, only to find there’s more going on there. Strange messages are left under the wall-paper from 1969 addressed to her. When she returns with her friend, her friend disappears just as a man arrives with a letter for Sally from her friend. This is the story where the phrase ‘timey-wimey’ is first heard, which does kind of describe this tale pretty well. Thankfully though, the concept isn’t that convoluted, it’s a reasonably logical story to follow with a host of wonderful elements to it.

Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow.

The Weeping Angels are the ‘monsters’ of the tale – creatures that turn to stone whenever someone can see them. It’s when you’re not looking that they move. What they do is send people back in time, rather than kill them, and feed off the displacement energy. I think that’s what they said! The Doctor is in 1969 with Martha without the TARDIS, and hides messages for Sally Sparrow on DVD easter eggs. Sally has a conversation with the Doctor on the DVD, whilst someone else writes everything down. It’s very clever, because later (for Sally Sparrow) yet earlier (for the Doctor) they bump into each other and Sally gives the Doctor the transcript so he can read it. So it all sort of works which is part of the beauty of ‘Blink’.

Also, it looks amazing. Not a high-budget story at a guess, but one very very well realised. The angels themselves look incredibly creepy, and I think this was voted the best new series episode of all in a poll somewhere? Not that I read the polls.

That seems perhaps a bit of stretch, but it’s certainly a great episode.

8.5/10