Rejected Dr Who Villains

Although an exceptional font of camp, filled with mad characters, poor sets, odd acting and illogical plot twists, Doctor Who prevailed. Until it was cancelled by a BBC who could no longer handle Sylvester McCoy's insatiable appetite for blood. When the series returned this decade after years of limbo, it was streamlined. The show was sharper, stronger, with less time for idiocy. The villains had to seem powerful and terrifying, and create complex metaphorical allegories which illuminate the way our society attempts to run itself.

But eventually Russell T Davies ran out of ideas and starting throwing any old bollocks at the wall to see how much garbage he could get past the audience. If it weren't for the strength of character possessed by his producers, we would've seen some truly awful creations appearing on our television screen to fight David Tennant. The producers hoped that no website peddling barely-read cultural content to a largely disinterested fanbase of four people would EVER find out about these plans. Well bad luck, producers! Because Wilftonville have found out everything!

For the first time, we can serialise the release of some of the most bizarre creations to ever come from the mind of a human. These are the REJECTED Doctor Who villains...!

#1 Bi-Mop

Bi-Mop is a filthy, noodle-ridden rag which attained sentience after The Doctor's attack on the Daleks radiated a nearby planet filled with kitchen cleaning appliances. Incensed by this enforced life he has been given, the Bi-Mop can grow several extra heads whenever it wants, each of which hates the Doctor but has a different accent. The normal head speaks with a German inflection, while the other heads are Italian, Belgian, Russian, Cuban and Canadian. Bi-Mop LOVES listening to Scissor Sisters and delivering long-winded monologues. He has a computer on which he constantly plays footage of the most prominent news channels on Earth, all of which are hosted by stern African-American women.

Bi-Mop isn't strictly gay, but he does have a boyfriend who is human.

Welcome To England! Part 1

So you’re wanting to learn all about England, eh? I bet you’re a little overwhelmed by all the different things which our nation has to offer, friend! Don’t worry, Wilftonville will give you the lowdown on what things are.

1:

What Is This Building?

This building is called a library.

What is it for?

A very popular activity in England is called ‘reading’. The main crux of this activity is looking at words written on paper and comprehending them. Through this act of comprehending words, Englanders learn new facts which were previously a mystery to them. As a general rule though, they check the back of the book first to see if it will tell them the truth, or if it will lie to them. A book filled with lies is called ‘fictional’. People like reading both lies and truths equally, and a library is the place they go to if they want to do so. Think of a library as being like one of those factory warehouses filled with food products. Instead of having row upon row of packaged beers and pastries, a library instead has row upon row of books stacked beside each other.

How Should I Use A Library?

Very quietly. Many people who read have sensitive bodies (this is a scientific fact), and will hear any noise committed in a library. So when you enter, take off your hat if you are wearing one and walk on tip-toe around the building. If you see a brightly coloured book you like, slowly take it off the shelf and sit down at a table. If you can find a table nobody else is sat at – sit there. Never sit at a table which is occupied by someone else, because this is an act of illegal aggression on your part. Open the book and read it at your leisure.

What If I Don’t Finish Reading?

You have to take your book to the counter and pay an extravagant fee. This is why everyone in a library looks so intense. If they do not finish comprehending their lies then they will have to pay for their weakness. In a situation where you are caught not finishing your story, you will have to have a photo taken of yourself which will be put on a “membership card”. You pay for this, and then are allowed to borrow the book for a small amount of time. Again though – if you do not finish your lies in time, the library-keepers will look for you and charge you more money for your mistake.

This Library-Keeper Threw Me Out!

That's because he is The Doctor. You accidentally walked into the Library Of The Dead. You should be grateful for his actions.

Pop Girls: Nerina Pallot's "Dear Frustrated Superstar"

Nerina Pallot
"Dear Frustrated Superstar"

****/5


Who is the Superstar? You are, dearest listener. Reader. Whatever you may be.

Nerina Pallot just so happens to be one of Britain’s most glittering pop musicians; a woman who not only puts together funny and clever lyrics but also sings them exceptionally well and then plays instruments over the top. Admittedly, this is not an unusual process with making songs. It is, in fact, THE process. Yet Nerina Pallot does everything with an air of sophistication and cool that marks her above most of the competition and makes her far better than the meandering introduction I’m giving her.

Quite often with pop you find that musicians play music which is nice, but won’t exactly set the world on fire. This is not true of Nerina Pallot. Her music will burn us from our homes and as we flee the flames of glorious noise together she will sit and watch with a knowing smile. Her songs are so good that her record company have done their best to keep them away from the public domain; this album was barely advertised when it was first released, and Nerina got so unhappy with her record company that she wrote a message on her website laying out all her frustrations. Nothing bad about that, you’d think – but the record company saw this message, and separation ensued. Nerina Pallot is a woman who knows exactly what she wants to happen with her songs, and it’s that level of quality control which makes this album stand out so. There are a wealth of fantastic pop songs on here, alongside some cleverly constructed ballads and a number of other song styles thrown in for good measure (tango, anyone?) If anyone asks – she is the best female singer/songwriter in Britain right now. Don’t keep it secret.

The two songs on the tracklisting which might worry any right-minded music fan are “Daily Bread” and “God”, as there are no good religious songs (possible exception: Christmas Carols). Luckily, the latter is all about religious confusion – always good in a song – and the former isn’t even about religion at all. ‘Daily Bread’ starts off with a drowsy, swaying vocal which is quickly displaced by a different style entirely, as she semi-sings the verses before rushing up to a big crescendo each time the chorus sweeps in. The song is about feeling like you’ve messed up life and want to go through it again, I think, but Pallot isn’t a songwriter who gives away too much with her lyrics. The song is pleasant, but one of the less memorable on the album. ‘God’ is much superior in this respect, as Pallot sings about her religious indecision over a sinister overtone of a kick-drum and very hushed chimes. What’s most memorable is her voice, which is incredible. She swoops and swoons at will, her deep, flowing voice carrying along without a care in the world. She hasn’t a powerful voice, but she has a resonant one – think Imogen Heap, if Imogen Heap weren’t all husky and whispery.

The two singles released from the album, which you won’t have heard because they’re too good, are “Alien” and “Patience”. Along with “Rainbow” these two songs form a tremendous trio of pop supremacy. Each are in their own way a superb addition to Britain’s pop catalogue, and something which The Cure would be proud to hear upon their ears (how do you think about that last sentence? Too archaic?). She packs each with a wall of production which forms an impenetrable pop bubble, and let’s her voice do what it does best – everything. Patience is the simplest of the three, fiddly electric guitar and a drumbeat boosted through vocals. Every moment of the song has some kind of vocal performance going on, and when she reaches her chorus everything jumps up into an aesthetically pleasing audio display. At this point in the review, I’m just playing around with words for the fun of it. ‘Rainbow’ is a little darker, with the focus on some bongos, maracas, and piano. For realsies! She sings in a low register for much of the song, before suddenly reaching out and producing a clear high for the chorus. “I don’t want your sympathy/just for you to worship me”, she sings, thus making clear once and for all how women expect to be treated by men. ‘Alien’ is the best of the three.

The songs which don’t work are “Daphne And Apollo” - and that’s a bonus track anyway, so you might not even hear it. And it’s not ‘bad’ so much as it is ‘ornate’.

“Very Good Sir” is not the best of songs, at least lyrically. Vocally she is again without fault (some singers never go wrong) but the lyrics don’t give her much to go on. The chorus tries to make up for this with some “doo doo doo” bits, which always work in pop, but that’s not quite enough to make up for the boring verses. There’s a nice music breakdown thing partway through, though. “Someday Soon” sounds quite a lot like something from a stage musical (minus the rubbishness that inevitably comes from a stage musical), moving from workable verses into a pretty chorus. Having a good voice helps paper over a few of the cracks in the album for Nerina, but the song gels well and is a pleasant listen. I prefer it when she sings darker, though, which is why I find so much to like in “Jump”. Although it sounds upbeat – jaunty, you could say, although I dislike the word so please don’t – the ‘jump’ of the title is of the narrator jumping into bed with a series of one-night stands which make her feel worthless the day afterwards. That she starts the song with

“Oh good lord above/I’m immune to the love/of a good man.
I go for the suckers/the mean motherfuckers”

Is a bit of a clue as to the downbeat nature, but you’d never tell from the peppy, lolloping music. In fact, the song could easily be played during a children’s television show, such is the wanton happiness it flaunts. Given the swearing, this would make for the greatest TV show of all time.

All the songs are long, but none feel like they go on too long. The longest is the opening “If I Know You”, which is possibly the best song on the album. Sticking to the deep end of the piano and throwing in strings and a sonorous (ten points for using the word sonorous in an appropriate context, please!) she creates a mini-epic of a song. It’s not epic because she doesn’t switch around the form of the song, but it is mini-epic because of the style of singing and the lyrics. “If I know you/you’ll come sailing through the starlight in the blue” she sings with a melancholic backflip that gets me every time. A sense of loss hangs heavy over the song, but with a hopeful nature that keeps things interesting and makes the song a first-rate opener. The title track is also one of her best songs, although at first things seem like they’re going to be stalling and clichéd. With chimes and keyboards playing gently over the top, the song quickly unfolds into something more than at first. It’s not about hating life as a musician – she doesn’t – because the superstar is YOU, as she points out on her hilariously written biography on www.myspace.com/nerinapallot . A guitar twangs into slow action and underpins what is a deeply affecting little ballad.

I’m onto a third page of writing, but I feel no compunction to stop suddenly. If you were going to skip this review you’d have already done it, so all the people still having fun/staring in bemusement at the odd wording – do/don’t worry, I still have a fair bit to say. Drum machines and a scaling piano take precedence in “Blood Is Blood”, which also features the lines “Tinkerball my winged friend/I think you’ve got it wrong” for which I will always love Nerina Pallot. The chorus scampers away joyously, and some of Pallot’s odd lyricism finds a home during the verses. She writes in the way I wish I could emulate, and it makes her music instantly accessible. This is not the sort of pop album which takes a few listens to appreciate (hello, Fiona Apple) but is instantly endearing. Like moi! “Watch Out Billie” is as trite as you’d expect, but hangs together on the fact that Pallot herself puts irony into every syllable of her performance. She’s warning Billie Piper of all people about the predatory nature of fame. The warning is that she should enjoy her fifteen minutes, but try to build something strong off the back of them, and find something in her life she enjoys. It was eerily prescient at the time, as the album was released during The Evans Years. And it’s fair to say this song is what persuaded Piper into auditioning for Doctor Who, and moving on to bigger things than her pop career. Fair to say, but probably a lie.

For a lot of “My Last Tango”, Nerina sings with only her piano as backup. But she has a whole orchestra waiting in the wings for when she tentatively reaches the chorus, before her voice starts silkily swooping again. It’s another one of the best songs on the album, and if you delete ‘Daphne And Apollo’ from your iPod it provides a lovely finale to an especially above-average pop album. I’ll repeat my opening when I say that Nerina Pallot is one of the best musicians in Britain at the moment. With people like Imogen Heap and Jem and Gemma Hayes in contention for that position, that’s no mean thing to achieve. Dear Frustrated Superstar stalled Pallot’s career, but it still stands as a great, cohesive album. It’s full of memorable and catchy songs, and it provided the grounding she needed in order to release her superior sophomore effort. I can’t recommend it enough.

The 100 Greatest TV Show Characters Of All Time (Part 7)

70: Wonderfalls: Jaye Tyler (Caroline Dhavernas)
Wonderfalls was cancelled very early in America, which was a big shame because in Jaye Tyler, it had a genuinely brilliant and unpredictable central character – and one who was plagued by talking toy animals. Jaye was a grumpy angry young woman who worked at a retail outlet by Niagrara falls (sample grumpiness:

Young Girl: “You’re not supposed to steal from the wishing fountain”
Jaye: “You’re not supposed to talk to strangers. Piss off.”)

Then toy animals start talking to her, telling her what to do in life. Naturally she’s much too grumpy to follow their instructions, and that’s where the fun of the show was. As life went on, she became much more sympathetic but didn’t ever stop being grumpy. And for that, we’re forever grateful.


69: Life on Mars: Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister)
We all know that life nowadays if too PC, too regulated. The police force have been crippled by paperwork – if they ever make an arrest, they have to do it by the book, and the slightest slip could see them sued. And most of us hate the whole thing. That’s why when Life on Mars came out that it was so popular, because the police didn’t care about regulations as long as they made the streets of Manchester safer. And Gene Hunt, kingpin of the 1970’s force, was legendary in his rough treatment. It was brilliant fun to watch Glenister beat up nasty people and chase them with his car, all the while carrying a huge arm cannon and wearing a trenchcoat. It’s a shame that the police today aren’t allowed to be like him, because the way he did things got results, and that can’t be denied.


68: Xena: Warrior Princess: Xena (Lucy Lawless)
The feistiest of all superheroes, Xena started out life as a baddie, surprisingly, until Hercules made her good and sent her on her way, on his show. She was such a strong character though that they spun her off into her own series, which quickly became more famous than the one that spawned her. Xena had countless trademarks, from her revealing-yet-also-not outfit, to her dodgy yipping screams whenever she did a backflip, to the round disk thing she used to stun enemies. She kicked the ass of everyone who appeared on the show at least once, and died several times before she was eventually crucified. Oh, and she was a lesbian too. Did anyone see that coming?


67: Doctor Who: The 10th Doctor (David Tennant)
Tom Baker: apologies. Only David Tennant’s take on Dr Who is in this list, in what is possibly the most controversial absence. But Tennant has taken over Dr Who and made it his own. After being infected with radiation, Christopher Ecclestone imploded and the 10th Doctor was regenerated. Quirky and thrilled by everything, his infectious charm has won the series many fans, and the chemistry he’s shared with just about every person, location and inanimate object has made his character a joy to behold. When he’s in his element, playing around with junk, he’s funny. When he’s being confronted by yet MORE Daleks, he’s serious and dramatic, and you root for him, which is going to make it all the more upsetting when he finally dies.


66: Dexter: Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall)
Perhaps the trickiest character on the list to define, Dexter is a forensic detective who harbours a dark secret; he’s a serial killer. He only kills people who deserve it – drug dealers, rapists, etc – but he doesn’t do it for the sense of satisfaction of helping others. No, Dexter is much darker than that. He truly does have no humanity, and Michael C Hall plays him with a quiet malevolence that unsettles almost as much as it does intrigue. Smart, witty, but completely unable to feel anything, his callous attitude to humanity sets him apart and makes him completely fascinating to watch.

The Ten Most Ill-Advised TV Couples, Part 2

3: "Spuffy" – Spike and Buffy, Buffy The Vampire Slayer


The worry about setting up Spike and Buffy in season six of the show was that it would surely have tired out both characters. Spike at this point was completely neutered as a villain, a vampire who couldn’t hurt anyone and who was mostly played for laughs instead of shocks, and Buffy was… well, she was almost always one of the weakest links in her own show. We’re not interested in any of the thoughts that the two characters shouldn’t be put together, because obviously it should never have happened. It’s the aftermath we find most interesting, easily. By putting Buffy with Spike, we effectively lost the ability to see new characters on the show. Once these two came together, it made the show far too interconnected and stopped any new characters (hello, Kennedy) from seeming like credible additions to the cast. It felt like from now on, we were never going to get anything new that last, because the show was intent on mixing it up with all the characters it had left. Even now, as the ‘show’ changes format and becomes a comic-book, we’re looking at a possible romance forming between Buffy’s friend Xander and her sister Dawn because NO. NEW. CHARACTERS. ALLOWED. As soon as Buffy and Spike made out, the show lost it’s fizz, and it fell apart slowly. A such, a lot of fans pretend the show ended back in series 5, two series before it truly closed, simply to keep out the poor stories that came at the end of the show. The moral would seem to be that kissing the undead is bad. (And how did they even have sex, anyway? Doesn’t a vampire have no blood flow? Wouldn’t sleeping with what is essentially a corpse be freakin’ cold? Why won’t you answer the questions that matter, Joss Whedon?)



4: "Drose" – The Doctor and Rose, Dr Who


Something we are seeing with stunning regularity on Doctor Who is that no women seem able to resist The Doctor. He’s had what, four assistants, and of them only one (the best one, Donna) hasn’t fallen for him. None of them fell for him more then Rose, played with an increasing stalkerish desperation by Billie Piper. The show never really put the two of them together as a couple, although it was obvious for everyone watching that the two of them fancied each other, especially once Christopher Ecclestone died and David Tennant turned up. At that point the pairing seemed like an inevitability. In a rare wise move, Russell T Davies decided at this point to send Rose to a parallel universe she could never return from, and we all breathed a sign of relief because at this point she was incredibly irritating and her presence meant David Tennant couldn’t do that wacky eye thing he does as often. And the British public demand Tennant eyes. We thought we were safe.

Until, that is, Rose broke down the walls of her world with the express purpose of seeing the Doctor again. She broke down the boundaries of reality! That’s mad. The Doctor by this point had seen the error of his ways thanks to the general awesome that was Donna, and he managed to return his disturbed stalker to her parallel world, sealing her back in with a clone of himself to make sure she never bothered him, or us, again. So hopefully that will be the last of that.

Who Should Be The Eleventh Doctor?

We’re getting closer and closer to the day when David Tennant hangs up the stethoscope (I bet you’ve never heard anyone make that joke, have you? Have you? Hahahaa!!) But when he does hang up the stethoscope, who should pick up the stethoscope that he has just hung up and use it as their stethoscope? To work it out, all we need to do is look at just what it is that makes the Doctor “THE” Doctor, and it all becomes startlingly clear. Stethoscope.

• The Doctor is surrounded by companions.
• The Doctor wears cool glasses.
• The Doctor can go from manic to calm within the space of two seconds.
• The Doctor is not particularly stylish.
• The Doctor is, however, a style icon.
• The Doctor is a little bit mad.
• The Doctor is male.
• The Doctor is the most egocentric man in the Universe.
• The Doctor blurts out nonsense phrases with odd regularity.
• The Doctor is loved by all.
• The Doctor is suave.
• The Doctor loves to order women around.
• The Doctor has a bizarre family tree.
• The Doctor is the mortal enemy of the Daleks.

Who, then, should be the Eleventh Doctor....?

Doctor Who Series 4 FINALE

Russell T Davies caps off his time as a series runner of Dr Who (he still has two specials this year and four in 2009 to go before he departs proper) with an episode that is altogether too poorly explained to be truly considered as one of the great episodes of modern time. “Journey’s End” had a lot of great moments in it, but overall the feeling was that the threat was too poorly thought out; the characters too poorly used, and the concepts too forced for it to work as a whole.

Not that Davies didn’t throw in some intriguing twists. Whilst the idea of the cloned Doctor was completely rubbish and didn’t really need to happen for the plot (aside from Rose’s farewell; more on that later), the Doctor/Donna combination was altogether more interesting, and I genuinely started wishing that perhaps we could finally get a female Doctor sometime soon. All the mumbo-jumbo the Doc usually spouts was perfectly captured by Tate, who made for a delightful semi-Timelord. Like I said though, having the Doctor clone came completely out of left-field and didn’t really work at any point, although the realisation that he was speaking like Donna came out slowly and was a brilliant point. Him killing off all the Daleks was thrown in as an afterthought, and when we sent him off with Rose at the end I couldn’t help but think that when the Doc was trying to convince her that it’d be the same as having the real him, it was Davies trying to persuade the audience as much as it was anything else.

This was the trouble with the second episode. The first brought together almost everyone who has been important in this new run of the programme, and although it took a fair old age for anything to happen in that ep; at least things were happening. Torchwood did stuff; Sarah-Jane did stuff, Rose got to hold her camera up as if she were praying in what was my least favourite shot of the series… Martha almost had a dramatic moment (although really it belonged to Jack Harkness – “Martha is down” had a sort of dramatic countdown effect going on that I really liked), and the Doctor and Donna tried to find the Earth. Everyone was heading somewhere, and the major failing of this episode was that now they were all together, there was nothing left. Davros and the Daleks got together to destroy reality because… well actually, why would they want to do that? Nonsensical evil? I’m sure you’ll tell me if you know. The threat was gone though, as soon as everyone got onto the ship. Aside from one moment which I’ll go into in a short while, there was nothing for any of them to do, really. I would’ve preferred it if they’d stayed on Earth and at least had some kind of battle or something.

Martha’s plot was by far the weakest. I don’t like repeating myself unless I’m being positive, but Freema Agyeman’s acting was pretty rough. She has the subplot that eventually got abandoned where she has a key that will blow up the Earth, and lordy. First we get the mad old German woman who annoyed me, and then she delivers a reasonably effective speech to Davros which ends with her hearing Rose’s voice. This scene, where she smiles about Rose returning, was just awful. Some horrific acting. After that Martha had a completely minimal role, with nothing left to do at all. Wasn’t just her, though; Jack was killed – and as we all know he comes back to life whenever he dies, we could fairly expect something cool to happen. Instead he got sidetracked by the ‘secret warriors’ (that term comes from an event in comicdom called ‘Secret Invasion’ which the first episode reminded me of) which were Mickey and Rose’s mum. I called it, ladies and gentlemen! I called it. Along with a few other things, I knew that Mickey would return – what I didn’t predict was just what he’d do after saving Sarah-Jane. Nothing at all. There was another sub-plot here that was useless. Why did Rose’s mum even have to turn up? It was nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.

And yes, we had yet another finale (that makes three, I believe, out of four) where the Doctor sits around and does nothing at all while events conclude around him. I want to see him DO something! It did mean we could have the best scene of the episode however, where he watches on as all his companions try to come up with violent ways to end the conflict and Davros mocks him for it. That scene finally took him down a peg and gave Tennant something to do other than be concerned about others. The Doctor is a great character who is always concerned with other people more than himself – giving him a crisis of faith is absolutely the way you have to go with him. I said this during my lottery (which was mostly right, I THANK YOU! I have to admit I thought Peter Davidson and Sylvester McCoy were going to be ‘the other doctors’ I mentioned, however, and there wasn’t really a reset button, but still) but Davies has too much love for his characters. He doesn’t want to have to hurt them, but you have to when you write for TV. The Doctor has to be in pain, and he has to be narcissistic. His whole ‘violence = no’ approach is narcissistic and impractical, but he goes for it because he’s stubborn. Make the Doctor flawed! He’s not a God!

Rose is the other character who never really suffers with Davies. Was there ever any doubt that she’d be safe? I don’t understand the reason for why they all had to go back to their alternative dimension that they hate, but I’m happy we’re rid of her. We were meant to have goodwill towards her character because she was on before, but we had better characters since her and she’s been overshadowed and outacted by Catherine Tate since the very beginning – and the voice? No reason given for it, so it must be some kind of dental work that Piper’s had done rather than a plot device. Weird! Tate, yes, was the best thing in the episode. She had the calm quality that even Tennant lacks nowadays and it was genuinely nerve-eroding to watch her, because she was obviously the companion who was going to die. We got another cop-out here, which I didn’t like much (I think she’d be better off dead, personally), but the fact that I cared about her character shows a lot about the way she’s developed on the show. And then it all got wiped away….

I’m not happy that this write-up seems to have turned into a slanging session, so I’ll stop for a second. I think Torchwood’s characters were brilliant here. Gwen and Ianto are clever, quirky creations who work better on this show than on their own, and I loved every second they were in – especially the way Ianto called the Doctor ‘Sir’. Similarly, the use of Mr Smith and the Sarah-Jane cast tied into the story and was useful, and I think as a tie-in the finale was very successful. I’d like to see more of both casts. And there were some good twists – the Tardis being dumped into the energy core, for example. It was unpredictable, and that made for good TV. Captain Jack was funny, as ever, although he’s still not a functioning character in any way, and Tennant really sold the darkness in the Doctor. I think that although the Dalek plot was complete hokum, davies gave us a fascinating look at their psyche. There was Davros, Dalek Caan (I thought it was Khan, like Genghis… turns out it is Caan, like James) and the Red Dalek all on different areas of the same side, and I really liked their interactions. Davros came back neutered though, but I assume we’ll see more of him at some point in the future, what with that ambiguous explosion and all.

It wasn’t a bad episode, but I’m getting to be very analytical now of everything that happens, and I think that’s because I’m starting to really get into the show. It’s not brilliant (it IS British TV, after all) but it has brilliant moments. These two episodes set us up fantastically – something Davies can do supremely well – but then let us down a bit on the landing. However, we did get something I’ve wanted for a long time: after Bernard Cribbins gave us a heartbreaking speech once Donna lost her memories and the Doctor walked off, Tennant went into his Tardis alone and just sat there. No trail for Christmas. He just sat there, and the weight of everything was on his shoulders. For that moment of reflection alone, this episode won me over.

Rating: B.

Stray Points:

• My dad pointed this out to me. On the Tardis door is says “push”, when it’s a pull door. Is that why nobody can ever get into it?
• I still hate Mickey, even after all this time off our screens. I still hate him. I won’t be watching Torchwood now that he and Martha are joining (well I will, but I won’t enjoy it).
• Dalek Caan’s voice is HILARIOUS!
• Six people operating the Tardis, as should be. Nice moment.
• K-9! Come here, boy! Good boy! I love K-9. His appearance bumped this episode up a grade, for me.
• Line of the week: “Binary…binary…binary…binary”. That really scared me, honestly. The biggest scare of the series came from the way Tate sold that scene. It was gripping.

Well then - that’s the end… for a few weeks! I’ll be back during the Proms, and then at Christmas, so don’t worry about getting withdrawals anytime soon. There’ll also be a few more Doc-related posts over coming Sundays.

So... I hope you’ve enjoyed these recaps. They’ve been a bitch to write sometimes, but I’ve always enjoyed reading your responses, and we’ll be back before you know it! How fantastic.

The Doctor Who Lottery

Spoilers! Oi – SPOILERS! If you haven’t seen up to the penultimate episode of Doctor Who, then you’re going to get spoiled by reading this. All up in your FACE. You’ve been warned, and are currently being so.

Right! We’ve come down to the wire now; and with only one episode left we’ve got a lot of ends still looking loose and untied, so let’s take a look at them. The penultimate episode of Dr Who last week teased at a lot of things, several of which would have major consequences to the show itself. Tomorrow brings the end of Russell T Davies’ tenure as the show-runner (he will be writing the specials next year, though, and the Christmas special), and things have really been ramping up recently. Here on the Doctor Who Lottery, we’re going to analyse and judge, and see what is most likely to happen tomorrow. We don’t know if the predictions we are making will end up being true or not, so this is all guesswork for the time being, albeit guesswork from handsome and clever sources (me). Feel free to put down your own theories down in the comments.


Thread 1: One Of The Companions Will Die!

This has been teased all year – Donna will die. She’s already been killed off briefly before, she’s not going to be back for Christmas, and every character who has met her has helped bludgeon us with the sledgehammer of foreshadowing. The Ood, the Romans, the palm-reader, everyone has told Donna that she will be the one to die. Martha and Rose are the other two candidates for death, but Russell T Davies doesn’t hold to the creed that every other writer on TV holds to – hurt the character you love the most. Joss Whedon kills off people will alarming regularity and no warning, JJ Abrams made sure that nobody on his casts were guaranteed a healthy life. Russell T Davies continually fudges it, moving people to other dimensions and the like. He likes Rose, but he won’t harm her. On the other hand, Martha has had such a weak storyline on the show that if she were to die nobody would care at all. Even The Doctor doesn’t seem to give two stuffs about her anymore. Mark my words: Donna will be the one to die. But will that be the end of her? Read on!


Thread 2: What will happen to Earth?

It’ll be fine. Of course it’ll be fine! I can’t believe you’d even question that. There is no way that at the end of this show the Earth will be in a bad position. Things will go back to normal, there’ll be a jaunty tune, and we will see that milkman go back on his rounds, blissfully happy again. Having said that though, Davies will be perfectly happy to kill off as much of our population as he wants in the final episode. Expect shocking statements like “the entirety of America has been destroyed” or something. How will he get away with this? Read on!


Thread 3: What will be the fate of Sarah-Jane Smith and Torchwood?

At the end of last episode, Sarah-Jane was cornered by Daleks whilst in her car, because for some reason she didn’t think that running them over would be a viable way to escape. Women drivers… Anyway. The Daleks raised their plungers o’ doom at her and she did a bizarre cowering pose that held for at least five seconds before the cameras pulled away. Will she die? No. She won’t. I’ve seen the castlist for the final episode, and I’m betting that a second team of heroes are due to show up any second to save her. And if not them, then Martha will show up and use her legendary ‘lameness’ power to make the Daleks explode.

As for Torchwood, I predict that they will both die. As an aside though, how good was Eve Myles acting as she was firing that gun and screaming at the Daleks? The best acting I’ve seen on Who, I’d say. It’s a shame they’re going to kill her, but don’t panic. Why shouldn’t you panic? Read on!


Thread 4: Who will be the next Doctor?

Oh no! The Doctor got shot by a Dalek and now he’s going to regenerate! We saw Tennant dragged into the Tardis and saw his hand start boiling over, and then he exploded. Who is going to be the next Doctor? Well, personally, my money is on David Morrissey. He’s due to appear soon, and he’d make a great Doctor, don’t you think? Not that he will become the Doctor this series, though. No, Davies has got something else planned instead. There have been a lot of shots this season which have focused on the chopped-off hand that belonged to Tennant from when he first became the Doctor. He lost his hand in a sword fight but grew back another one. This is going to become very important indeed, because Tennant is going to retain his appearance. Somehow – and I don’t dare try to work out the logic here – the fact he already lost a hand is going to tie in to his regeneration, and he won’t change appearance or anything. Oh, but you COULD very well see more than one Doctor appear, but I refuse to tell you any more about that. Want more details on how the Doctor will survive? Read on!


Thread 5: How will the series end?

Deus-ex-machina. There is no other way to put it. There will be a massive reset button that will take us right back to the start of the series, or the last episode, or somewhere near to there. Everyone who dies will come back to life, and get sent off to their home or dimension or a different planet or whatever. The Daleks will be defeated and Davros will either die in an ambiguous explosion or leave with Donna. Leave with Donna? How bizarre! Not really. There have been signs pointing to this for a while, but again – not going to spoil them for you. So what happens next, then? Read on!


Thread 6: What will the future hold?

Martha goes back to her fiancée and UNIT. Sarah Jane and Torchwood go back to their respective shows, but with slightly expanded casts (the people who I think will be saving Sarah-Jane will move on to Torchwood, that is). Donna will go her own way. Captain Jack might vanish for a while. Rose will go with the Doctor. Adventures will ensue, but on a strict time limit. The earth will be fine. Tennant will live on as the Doctor until at least partway through series 5. He won’t make the end of that series. Stephen Moffat will make adventurous TV that will get lower ratings. And David Morrissey will become the Doctor! Want more predictions? Read on!


No, not really. That’s everything I have to say. So I guess we’ll just have to see if I’m right, eh?

Doctor Who Series 4 Episode 11: Turn Left

After last week gave us a Doctor-filled adventure, this week we’re presented with a ‘what-if’ type story featuring Donna Noble. After the Doctor and Donna touch down in a quaint market-place, Donna is taken in by a dodgy fortune-teller woman with an odd accent, who promptly attaches a weird bug to our heroine which transports her back to a time before she hadn’t met the Doctor, and inspires her to take a different path through life that bypasses him entirely. What follows is a dystopian vision of Britain – with no Donna to save him, the Doctor dies during that Christmas special two years ago and things go from bad to worse very quickly.

And much of the episode is very effective. Catherine Tate is on good form here, as we see her character go through subtle changes as she turns from shrewish good-for-nothing to a more worthy, intelligent person. Tate is very adept at conveying this slow growth of her character - although unusually enough, the majority of her comedic scenes are botched. No worries, though, because Tate is a much more effective dramatic actor than a comedic one when it comes to Who, so it’s nice to see her stretch her ability. With no David Tennant around, the show does seem wobbly, but Russell T Davies’ script compensates by incorporating this into the proceedings. As time goes on we see all the different events from season 3-onward come to fruition without the Doctor, none of which end particularly well for us. The absence of Tennant is fantastically put together, and shows how needed the Doctor is for earth, and for the show.

It’s much better to witness his absence than to suffer through all the messiah parallels that Davies’ seems to have put into the script. Yes, it's true, we get a fair few scenes here proclaiming the Doctor as the best thing ever, and they get quite annoying. But at the same time it’s nice to see names we’re familiar with spring up from time to time – Torchwood get a mention, and it’s nice to see they’ve finally started doing proper missions instead of constructing elaborate love-triangles with one another. One character who comes into the breach to help Tate is none other than... I won’t name her, the show doesn’t, but she’s back and she’s oddly poor in the role. Was it just me, or has she got some kind of bizarre lisp during this episode? I certainly don’t remember noticing that before, and perhaps she’s had it all belong. In any case, she sounds strange and she doesn’t seem able to convey the emotions that her character should have. This could be done intentionally, to cover what’s been happening to her and will all be explained later, but… I’m a little worried. I hope it gets better.

Russell T has got a nice story here, and while in most cases a ‘what if’ merely provides a chance to kill off the supporting cast, here he uses it as a way to expand on them instead. Donna’s family are prominent for most of the story, and Bernard Cribbins again steals as much of the show as he can with his unflashy yet gripping acting style. We also see a little more of Donna’s mother, who slowly becomes more and more depressed as things go on. Both of them are fantastic, and it feels realistic – it provides a solid base for the story (and Tate) to work against. There are a few quibbles, however – Russell T Davies seems to think that Yorkshire hasn’t changed for the past fifty years. As a Yorkshireman myself, it was odd to see the Yorkshire from Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning Of Life’ film being portrayed as reality. That bugged me. Also, everything remains completely cryptic, with no explanation offered for several parts of the story (including who the fortune teller is).

That aside, this is a good episode, well-written and entertaining, and it sets up the remaining two fairly well.

Rating: B+.

Next week: The Universe calls upon Gwen, Ianto, Jack, Martha, Rose, Sarah-Jane and Donna to save it. Oh, and the Doctor might appear too.

Doctor Who Series 4 Episode 10: Midnight

I've given up caring about Dr Who recently, in honesty. It was never my favourite show to start with, but I've grown more and more apathetic as the series has gone on. Hence why my reviews have gotten quicker. Here's my review for episode 10, which by no means was a rubbish ep.


Russell T begins his four-episode dash to the finish with an almost entirely Donna-less episode that almost single-handedly proves how much the Doctor needs a foil. The twosome have gone for a relaxing spa-break, which brilliantly means something completely different for each of them. While Donna wants to kick back and sunbathe, the Doctor is itching to go see things. If there’s one thing that Davies has always captured well, it’s the personality of the Doctor, and this episode gives him a strong showing. He goes off and leaves Donna (who gets her own Donna-centric episode next week), thus becoming the star of his own show as the trainride he takes is hijacked by… something.

Davies takes this admittedly short premise and plays it as a psychological affair, seeing how different people react to the pressure of, y’know, alien stuff. The Doctor is accompanied by a ragtag gang of clichés, including a professor and his assistant, a family where the son is infinitely smarter than the parents, and the mysterious stranger, played by Lesley Sharp. This is where things fall apart. Whilst the premise is competent enough, Davies flunks because each of his characters has to bend around the will of the plot. Remember how I said the Doctor is always well-characterised? I lied. He’s well characterised until Davies needs him to not be in order to further the plot. The episode thus descends into an array of shouting which gets nobody anywhere.

The atmosphere that was all around during the two library episodes is completely gone, creating an episode that seems strangely dull and certainly not as intense as would be required. Things happen, and I won’t spoil any of them, but they don’t seem to be as bad as the central characters make out. The actors here, by the way – playing it by the book. They’re all decent, and lord knows Lesley Sharp has a VERY difficult job with what her role asks of her… and they’re all competent enough. Nobody really shines out, and by the end you want most of them to die (and maybe they do? I will never tell). Then again, that’s usually the way with supporting casts.

So basically a load of people are trapped in a small area, strange things happen, things escalate, and then there’s a kinda flat ending which doesn’t help matters much. Donna seems to be acknowledged by the entire Dr Who team as a calming presence now, though, which helps the final scene out tremendously. Overall though, the episode has FILLER written all over it with black marker-pen. It’s not awful by any means, just… competent.

Rating: C.

Doctor Who Series 4 Episode 9: Forest Of The Dead

Just a quick review this week, for I am making much of the lazy this weekend.

Stephen Moffat set a lot of plates spinning by the end of part one of his series 4 two-parter, and he starts off part two by adding yet more plates to that collection. In the process, we get one of the smartest and most fulfilled episodes of doctor who we’ve seen in a fair while. The episode picks up straight up from last week, with Donna stuck in a different world where the mysterious Doctor Moon starts talking gibberish to her. The girl starts freaking out, and as she does so things start going haywire in the library too, as the Doctor rushes to try and work out just what the heck is going on before everyone dies.

It’s a good episode, bolstered by a string of great guest stars, with Alex Kingston taking central stage as the boisterous River Song, a woman who may know the Doctor but may not and oh heck, but it’s all confusing. This is the sort of episode that probably works best the second time you watch it, in fairness. Stephen Moffat’s script allows for a lot of plot whilst also developing up Donna’s character a treat, but at the same time – we finally get to see some progress made with the Doctor. He’s been sat by the sidelines all season, commenting on things before swooping in to save the day at the end of this episode, so it’s a relief to see someone start working on him, changing his persona and giving Tennant something to work with. He is terrific in this episode, his level of knowledge pretty much the same as that of the viewer as things slowly start falling into places, and watching him as he slowly works out what is going on is a joy. Tate is completely in step with him now, holding up her side of the story all on her own. Both characters work well together, but this is the first time this series that anybody has done anything worthwhile with them as individuals.

It helps that Moffat has collected together every childhood fear that anyone would have into one episode, giving us shadows, walking skeletons, nightmares, all sorts of things in one episode. I found this episode to be excellently done, because Moffat could be cruel or he could be kind. You get the feeling he will kill off whoever he wants, and that sense of danger is what propels the episode along. It’s a slick, fast, effective episode, and it bodes well for Moffat’s tenure as the ringleader of the merry dance of Doctor Who. Also, spoiler, it seems as if Tennant may be getting a haircut sometime soon. About time, I say – that barnet of his is veering dangerously close to Pat Sharp territory.

Rating: A.

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 8: Silence In The Library

Oh, the pressure. Not only is this Stephen Moffat’s first episode written since he was announced as the new boss creator person for the show, it also happens to have been given two weeks of build-up by the BBC press, and has one of the starriest casts that the show has ever featured. Amongst others, the names of Alex Kingston and Colin Salmon both appear in the cast list, and the script is one of the most ambitious that Moffat has attempted. The thing is… we won’t know how successful he’s been until part two.

It’s an ambitious episode, one that throws in so many different concepts at the same time that it gives you no time to breathe in-between them. First we get the idea of a giant deserted library which may or may not be part of a young girl’s subconscious, into which the Doctor and Donna march. We then see disembodied human faces used as computers, spacesuits that record your spirit after you die so you have an extra few minutes of life (and which enable your dead body to move even though you aren’t controlling it) and not forgetting the idea that stepping into the shadows means you’ll be eaten by tiny piranha fish of some kind. Stephen Moffat seems to be on a one-man mission to scare the living shit out of the nation. This is one of a few episodes that have got the highest warning ratings available by the television standards people (the other ones being his other episodes, actually), and it shows in the use of every terrifying image kids ever have rolled into one package. All he needs is for part two to have a portrait that comes to life, and this will officially be the scariest thing ever.

The episode does suffer in comparison to Blink, though, and it seems a little like Moffat’s scripts don’t suit the two-parter structure. There is a lot of setup here, which will no doubt pay off next week but for now feels like a lot of shuffling of pieces into place without any real movement made. The cast help, although Alex Kingston’s role is immensely annoying throughout. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great actress, but so much of her role at the moment relies on her not telling us anything that you just lose patience with her. Over in the ‘real world’ sections of the story, where a psychiatrist (Colin Salmon, who never survives anything, so expect him to be offed next week) is evaluating a little girl who dreams about the haunted library where the others are all camped, was the more compelling aspect of the story, actually. I have to confess I’m getting a little tired of the Doctor (as, I think, Donna may be, judging from a few of her reactions) with his constant shouting and rushed explanations. I imagine that inbetween episodes Donna sits him into chair and gets him to slowly explain everything that just happened, because if I were in her position I’d be so lost right now. Incidentally, Donna gets bludgeoned with the anvil of foreshadowing this week, as Alex Kingston’s character specifically says that she won’t be with the Doctor much longer. Sigh.

I want to mention Steve Pemberton, the second of the three League of Gentlemen actors to appear on the show, because he can play obnoxious like nobody else but doesn’t get much chance to do so here. I’m hoping next week he gets to be a total asshole, or else his inclusion on the show will be a wasted opportunity. Much more entertaining was Talulah Riley, who played a dim-witted assistant and got some unexpected poignancy out of her redshirt death. The idea of the suit recording her last thoughts is a clever one, and made for two outstanding sequences. The library itself helps, being a great setting for a story and being so expansive that it makes a nice change from the cramped factories that the Doctor usually visits. The set design and CGI in the episode was used very well together, and added to the episode more than they took away. When the Doctor and Donna walked round the library at the start, the use of CGI to bring the world to life was staggering, because it was done simply, and not filled with details like flying cars or whatever. It was matter-of-factly, and thus worked better.

This was a good episode, really, but everything hinges upon how good next week is. The measure of a good first-part is if it makes you want to see part two, and this episode certainly succeeded in that. Hopefully Moffat can pay off on the (slightly weak, if I’m honest) cliffhangers he’s introduced here, and it’ll be a good indicator of how well he’s going to do when he’s writing half the episodes, like he will next series.

Episode Rating: B.

Stray Points:

• Have you noticed that nobody says bad things about Tate anymore? She’s become part of the scenery now, nobody questions her presence, and I like that. Her scene where she flickers in the Tardis was the highlight of the episode for me.
• Did anyone see the picture the girl had drawn? It was of a blonde girl and a wolf…
• Alex Kingston is hot. Who do you think her character could be? Future companion?
• Line of the week: Riley’s disembodied last thoughts: “Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream”.

Next week: A flying Doctor! Those sonic screwdrivers can do anything.

A Doctor Who Exclusive from Stephen Moffat

Hello everyone! My name is Stephen Moffat, the man who is going to be taking over the best show on British TV that doesn’t feature Gina Bellman in it; “Doctor Who” for the next series. Russell T has done a lot of good work with bringing the show into the next century/millennium, but he still gets criticised a lot for some of his storylines. I understand that. I’m a writer too, after all, and it’s impossible to not look at the show with a somewhat critical eye. There are going to be changes once I take over, I promise you that, and just to wet your appetite I thought I’d mention a few of the things I’m going to be doing to the show which will make it better.

1: Firstly, what’s up with bringing back the Daleks every three or four episodes? Has there been a series without any daleks in it, yet? I’m so sick and tired of those things! Rest assured, I won’t be having any daleks in my show at all. Not one.

2: We’ll be spending more time in the TARDIS. It has more than one room after all, so what’s the point in NOT exploring it? I expect to set most of my episodes within the Tardis from now on, which will be revealed to contain a bar and sofa room so the Doctor can lounge around from time to time and have some fun, idle chat with his companions.

3: There seems to be a thing where the relationships on the show are all inconceivably messed up. Rose and Martha were both much too young-looking to fit in with Tennant or Ecclestone, and when Donna got brought in (a character who actually looked like a decent fit for Tennant) she was instantly pushed away from the romance role. My version of the show won’t be like this. The majority of characters will be in their thirties, to give a more weary approach to time-travel shenanigans.

4: Gina Bellman will become the next Doctor. There, I said it. She’s such a good actress! I really can’t understand why people don’t cast her in everything, because she can do comedy (like she did on Coupling) or drama (like she did on Jekyll). She’s a great all-rounder, and will make a great Doctor.

5: Each episode will play part of a larger arc, but will be individually contained. The structure of each episode will be messed around with quite a lot, because this makes the show more interesting. We’ll be showing flashbacks and flash-forwards within the episodes, to comic effect, as well as using split-screen and nonlinear narrative.

6: Episodes have featured serious scenarios and real-life problems in the past, and my show will follow up on this. We’ll be pushing the limits of primetime TV with episodes where the characters call each other up all the time and talk about sex. In fact, I may as well reveal this to you now… sex will be the main theme of the show, which will be more adult. It won’t be depressing, though! In fact, we plan to spice up everything by making the show a broad comedy.

7: The theme tune will be drastically reworked into a techno version of the classic song “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps”. We will also be renaming the show “Coupling”, as part of the relaunch.

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 7: The Unicorn And The Wasp

My favourite episodes of TV shows tend to be the ones that enjoy their central premise and give a simple plotline which works off the basics of what makes the show great. When the cast of Angel got separated into a boys vs girls fight in the fantastic “Billy”, for example, or when Alias sets up a hostage situation inside the offices where main character Sydney worked (The Box, parts 1+2). So to see the Doctor Who team sit back for a moment from all the flying around and aliens to deliver a simple time-travel story, I was happy. In “The Unicorn And The Wasp”, Donna and the Doctor go back in time to enjoy a tea party which, surprise, features Agatha Christie as a guest, winningly played by Fenella Woolgar. Quickly we are introduced to a reverend, a professor, a society woman and several other characters, including an Old Colonel. Sound familiar somehow? I should hope so, because the episode turns out to be a whodunit (not a pun) after Professor Peach gets lamped, in the library, with some lead piping. There’s murder afoot, and the Doctor teams up with Christie to try and solve things.

This led to a solidly entertaining episode, which was played off as a comedy despite featuring some kinda graphic murder sequences, when you consider the audience that Who is aimed at. People get stabbed and beaten and stuff, but the light-hearted tone persists throughout. It seems like an odd link of genres, but it works, for the most part. The episode is helped by a series of clichéd character beats that are played up to be silly, such as Felicity Kendall’s constantly shocked lady of the house, who obviously has a hidden agenda going on. The characters were all assembled pretty quickly, and established well, but the focus for this episode, as far as I was concerned, was the relationship between the Doctor and Donna. This was the first episode Catherine Tate filmed after the Christmas special, so you could see her starting to tone down the character in this episode, and it was surprising how well her performance sat in amongst the previous episodes she’d appeared in. Donna is turning out to be quite the companion for the Doctor, although they’ve really missed a trick, romantically. This is the first companion who hasn’t been interested in the Doctor romantically, but the fact remains that Tate is the first actress (excluding Jessica Hynes, who wasn’t technically a companion anyways) to actually have chemistry with the Doctor, and as Tate and Tennant are of a similar age, it seems a shame not to have a relationship going on. Martha and Rose both seemed weird for having a romance with the Doctor because they were so young, but it feels right with Donna and yet… nothing going on.

Not that the writers don’t like to bash us over the head with this. The recurring joke of someone mistaking the pair for a couple surfaced again, and we got to see Tate kiss the Doctor in a tremendously silly scene where he detoxed himself. It took us out of the episode, and it would’ve been more fun to focus on the murders than a stupid moment where the Doctor is almost poisoned until he eats some walnuts (although Tennant properly chugged those things). The lack of murder in this murder mystery was a big shame, as far too many characters were left standing at the end. However, these are little gripes I have with an episode that was overall entertaining. We didn’t have to think about anything apart from the story this week, which made for a nice change. There weren’t any heavy-handed metaphors, of which this season has been too zealous, and although we got the compulsory alien, it was fitted into the plot in a way which sort of made sense.

Yes, the giant wasp. When I saw the previews I thought this episode would solve the problem of the bees which has been mentioned constantly throughout the series. You’d think by now that the Doctor would look to check up on something as strange as this, but he seems content enough to float from mystery to mystery instead. I’m happy enough with that, because it gives us some more diversity. The opening scenes of this episode, and the jokes made at the expense of Enid Blyton, Christie, and Brideshead Revisited (at least that’s the vibe I got from the relationship between the son and the servant-boy, which incidentally was possibly my favourite joke of the episode) gave the show an English feel which lasted til’ the end. Personally, I loved the little touches, such as Donna’s attempts to speak ‘1920’ and the reaction of the vicar to the thieves he met in the church. This Britishness clashed just enough with the alien wasp thing to make the episode that much more entertaining, although in honesty I would probably have preferred to have just a human villain. Attempting to connect a giant wasp with Agatha Christie’s disappearance seemed like a bit too much for the plot to work out, and this turned out to be the case, in the end. The finale seemed a little rushed and was sadly a bit disappointing, because it had to pack so much into the last five minutes. Up until that point, though, this episode was a nice change of pace for Who, and provided a solid episode for the characters.

Rating: B.

Stray Points:

• The Unicorn subplot didn’t have much meat on it, but I liked the actress playing the role.
• I guessed who the murderer was as soon as I saw the character.
• Even though it was a little upsetting that the Butler didn’t do it.
• Donna’s magnifying glass scene: clever, or a bit silly?
• Line of the Week: I liked two lines this week. Tennant assuring that guests who Donna is: “This is the plucky young girl who assists me”, and Donna noticing the sexual tension between the two male lovers. “Typical. All the good men are on the other bus.”

Next Week: Stephen Moffat writes a two-parter! Will it be the best thing ever?

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 6: The Doctor's Daughter

Here’s a spoiler warning: “The Doctor’s Daughter” is perhaps the weakest episode of Doctor Who we’ve seen under Russell T. Davies’ command yet. From the contrived opening sequence through to the tacky battle sequences and spectacularly uninteresting plot. After a quick bit of blather where Donna, Martha and the Doctor deliver some standard lines about how shocking everything is, the Tardis lands in the middle of an underground tunnel in a world where a group of humans are fighting a group of fish monsters called the Hath. Why? Well, uh… oh look! The Doctor has a clone! Let’s focus on that instead.

Yes, the Doctor gets grabbed as soon as he lands and put into one a DNA machine which looks strangely like the ones in Idiocracy, and a hatch duly opens and releases Jenny upon the world. Technically she’s the daughter of the Doctor, but instead of getting any exploration of this we instead get a lot of bickering and monologues instead. Practically the entire episode is made up of Donna saying “isn’t it amazing that you have a daughter?”, the Doctor denying that she’s really his daughter, and Jenny talking about how much she loves fighting. It gets tiring very very quickly, but the worst thing is that there’s really no need to her to exist at all. The fact she’s created from DNA provided by the Doctor is at no point relevant to the plot – she’s here for one episode, and then she sacrifices herself to save the Doctor. Anyone could have done that. Georgia Moffet is adorable, and you see brings a sparky energy to her role, but the role is so underwritten and uninteresting that everything she does is overshadowed by the clunky plot device that introduces her.

There’s a lot of fighting in this episode between two groups. One group, the humans, are led by Nigel Terry, taking the “wooden plank” approach to leadership. Every line he delivers is flat and monotone, there’s no emotion or feeling behind any of his actions, meaning that when he turns ‘properly’ evil at the end, nobody is surprised. The plot is the barest of threads, and everything hangs off it limply. Speaking of, the giant fish creatures the hath are completely odd, the rubberest looking monsters we’ve seen since… the Autons, who were rubber by nature. Martha gets saddled with them for the B-plot after they kidnap her, and spends most of her time delivering exposition. When she finally gets round to doing something, it seems completely irrelevant and leads to the WORST MOMENT IN DR WHO HISTORY. A swamp is involved. You have to see it to believe it.

Neither of the B-plots eventually go anywhere, and we end up in a big room with all the characters together, as the Doctor gives a big speech about… something. It’s impossible to care about anyone involved here, and the contrivances that bring the plot to a head are just annoying. What’s worse is that writer Stephen Greenhorn’s take on the Doctor seems completely wrong. Instead of being fascinated by the machine which appears from nowhere and replicates a daughter from his DNA, he actively tries to disown her. It feels like a cheap way to distance the Doctor from the audience, and Tennant’s performance is anything but convincing. You can tell when he feels bored with the role, and here he has to deliver a lot of wooden dialogue which goes nowhere, and the desperation and annoyance in his eyes seems to come from Tennant instead of the Doctor. He’s as tired with the premise of the show as we are.

Not everything’s bad, although depending on your feelings about Catherine Tate this next statement may tell you everything you need to know about the ep. Donna is the best thing in it. Her character is smart and witty, and actually shows human emotions that anyone could relate to. Whereas Martha is crying her eyes out because a fish monster died (by drowning! WHAT?) and the humans are fighting because - wait, that was never really explained – Donna is trying to do something about the situation and fix things. She steps into the role of the main companion, and she brings some sense of gravity to proceedings. I know she gets a lot of stick online, but she’s the best thing for the series right now.

Every now and again Doctor Who fumbles an episode – oh Michelle Collins, where art thou – and this is a classic example. The plot makes no sense even in a sci-fi setting, the characterisations are wrong, everything about this episode is awful. And don’t even get me started on that bolted-on epilogue, which seems more like an excuse for another spin-off than anything else. This is a filler episode, but the writers don’t even have the courtesy to make it, at the very least, and entertaining bit of filler. The worst piece of TV I’ve seen in a long while - of Torchwood standard.

Episode Rating: F.

Stray Points:

• How does Martha know about regeneration? She’s never seen one!
• That scene where Jenny flips through the wire grid is even worse than it looked on the trailer. What was the point again?
• At least Martha’s out of the picture, our of the Tardis. I still don’t understand why she needed to be in there in the first place.
• Line of the Week: Tate had a few, but her revealing that "my friend Nerys mothered twins using a turkey baster" was probaby the funniest.

Next week: A murder-mystery? With Agatha Christie! Golly…

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 5: The Poison Sky

First things first: I spazzed this review out as soon as I finished watching the episode, so I could get it posted onto http://www.aintitcool.com/, so forgive me if this seems to be written in a slightly different manner from usual. They only got a mini version of it though, while you lovely people get a fuller, more complete one...

Doctor Who has never been good at following up on a good opening. Too often in the past, we’ve been set up and then let down by lacklustre resolutions and lazy deus ex-machinas. This episode was slightly different, in that the super-handy world saving device came into play but didn’t feel forced in the least. After the Sontarans released their strangely ineffective gas into the atmosphere (seriously, couldn’t they have made it a little bit more potent? Would’ve saved on a lot of effort in the long-run) they follow up by taking over the factory where the Doctor, UNIT, and the Marclone are all in residence. This episode may have had a little bit of padding at the sides, but all in all managed to deliver a satisfying conclusion to a two-parter which already is one of the more successful story arcs of the entire series so far.

The main theme here is that of trickery. More than once, Helen Raynor’s witty and intelligent script (never thought I’d say that, she wrote last years awful "Daleks In Manhattan" episodes) leads the audience into something which seems to make no sense, only to turn on us and reveal that this was the point all along. Case in point? The Rattigan Academy. When it was introduced last episode it seemed as if it were being shoehorned into the episode for little reason apart from using up extra running time. How wrong we were – it turns out that this is what we were meant to believe all along, so when the inhabitants of the academy (dressed, distractingly, in Star Trek red-shirts – I honestly expected a massacre to happen) turned against Rattigan and moved on, it gave the skittish imp a reason to sacrifice himself at the end. Which he did, in another moment that tricked the viewers, as we expected the Doctor to find an escape from nowhere when, in fact, there was none. Rattigan’s kiss-off “Sontaran – HA!” didn’t seem cheesy either, something Dr Who has been terribly guilty of in the past.

And speaking of, this episode was reasonably Martha-free. Freema Agyeman has had a short thrift with Torchwood and Dr Who since her return, never getting much to do – possibly for the best, but still. Her impression of an emotionless clone was unsurprisingly accurate, as that’s what she played for most of the third season, but she still did a reasonable job of acting when she was called to, at the end. Her whole clone subplot seemed like a bit of a waste of time though, really, and far more interesting was Donna, who went from useless idiot who can’t work out how to break a car window to mallet-wielding Sontaran beater. The scene where she thwacks out a Sontaran guard with a rubber mallet alone gets this episode an A-rating. It helps that she’s surrounded by a family that you can actually care about. Rose’s family was annoying, Martha’s family hysterical, but Donna has Bernard Cribbins for a grand-dad, who puts in another tremendously affecting performance this episode, waving Donna off at the end in a realistic and emotional manner that tugs at the ol’ heart-strings no end.

There were a lot of little moments here amongst the madness which made the episode damn entertaining, from the casual sexism of the Sontarans to the return of the big skyjet thing from the end of Series 3. Whilst this episode brought in a lot of continuity from episodes past, it also managed to put in a few touches that hint towards the future. I don’t know if anyone else saw this – but was that Rose who appeared on Donna’s computer screen moments before the Doctor spoke to the Sontarans? If so, then the ending of the episode suddenly makes much more sense. Going back to this episode though, there were a fair few moments that seemed out of place. Ross, who was so well introduced last week, snuffs it pretty casually this episode, with only Tennant seeming to care about his death. Likewise, the whole point of the Sontarans infiltrating the military base was to protect their Martha clone, but we never got told why they needed to clone her in the first place. The infiltration scenes thus came off as an excuse for the BBC to execute another (admittedly impressive) battle sequence. It also grated a little to see the soldiers fight back with their "convinient guns". What, they only just realised they had them? I was hoping they were going to bring out some swords, so personally that was a letdown. Oh, and the Sontaran weapons – awful special effects. Awful. Much better was watching the Doctor ‘fix’ the Earth’s atmosphere, and the Sontaran spaceship, equipped with a… well I’ll say it – a pretty damn phallic laser cannon.

“The Poison Sky”, against all odds, was a witty, intelligent, and entertaining episode, packed with fun moments and great character development for everyone involved apart from Martha (naturally). We had some superb acting from Tennant and Tate, as well as several members of the supporting cast, and to top it off the episode ends with a small cliffhanger which may or may not have been caused by Rose. Sadly, Martha IS back in the Tardis, but you can’t have everything, can you?

Episode Rating: A.

Stray Points:

• The brigadier is still alive?
• In the scene where the parts of the world with nuclear capability launched nuclear missiles at the Sontarans, North Korea was amongst them?
• I was worried we wouldn’t get to see the Sontarans get their comeuppance – no such worries! They got hella killed!
• Line of the episode: "Are you my mummy?"

Next week: A father-daughter reunion.

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 4: The Sontaran Stratagem

After witnessing Martha’s opening line this episode (yes folks, Martha is back, and pretty much as uninteresting as ever she t’were) I sighed with pain. Not only was it overblown, but it effectively wastes what should have been a great opening. All she has to do is say “Doctor – we need you!” but instead she says “I’m bringing you BACK to Earth!” Sigh! That aside though, this episode generally managed to keep things restrained, to its credit, and was a fun enough opening to a two-part storyline.

This episode brought the Doctor and Donna back to Earth to help ol’ pal Martha Jones solve a mystery that had been going on, which eventually revealed itself to be the work of the Sontarans, a classic Dr Who foe brought back here. This show has a history of bringing back classic villains well, and this episode is no exception. The Sontarans prove to be the most interesting baddies we’ve yet seen on the show, due to their code of honour. It gets old very quickly when every alien race is shown to have no honour, thus making it clear that their human allies will be killed off as soon as they stop being useful. Not so here, for the Sontarans have a strong sense of honour, which made them, for me, highly likable. They seems smart for once, a proper villain for the Doctor. And this is what makes the episode work – the characters. Although Tennant’s acting remains worryingly tic-ridden (he’s becoming more a collection of reactions than a character, sadly), the Doctor is portrayed as clever, for once. Not just in the cooing over gadgets sort of way, either – his banter is smart, and you can see the way his brain is working while he talks to people. The scenes where he checks out Martha and brattishly brilliant baddie Rattigan to see where their motivations lie are very well done indeed, the Doctor holding back to what reactions he gets from them. It was nice to be reminded of just why The Doctor is the main character here, for once.

The characters were all written very well by Helen Raynor, who has a lot of things to juggle here but does so with tremendous grace. The interactions between Donna, the Doctor, and Martha was all fascinating and entertaining in equal measure, as was the way in which UNIT (whom Martha now works for) were shown as goodies. We’ve had quite enough of agencies with double-standards, and it’s great to finally have a heroic organisation who we can actually root for. I don’t really know why UNIT were brought back when Torchwood remains woefully ignored – is that still going? How powerful is it? – but it fit into the story well. Ah yes… the story. This was the downfall of the episode. There simply wasn’t enough plot to go round, which meant Raynor had to start writing filler scenes to keep things going. This involved a protracted sequence where two guards are captured and brainwashed by Sontarans, and a sub-plot involving Donna which didn’t ring true at all. Donna, having been told by Martha to make sure her family are okay with her travelling through time and space, returned home. Now this is a little annoying, because again it plays with the character’s mental reasoning. Donna is, I’d assume, in her thirties, yet she keeps acting like a teenager. It was nice to see her interact with her family again, but she should surely act in a more grown-up way by now. If she’s so old, how come she needs to keep going home every few days? It doesn’t make sense. Martha’s speech warning Donna about the Doctor was well-played by Freema Agyeman, but didn’t ring true. We haven’t seen nearly enough destruction caused by the Doctor to believe any of the talk that he brings chaos wherever he goes, and it seemed out-of-place for Martha to mention it.

There were some moments that didn’t seem relevant, such as Martha’s questioning of a Polish worker which came off as hilarious simply because of the actor’s ridiculous accent. He was trying to pretend he was brainwashed, but he seemed like something out of the Mighty Boosh more than anything else. Also the idea that GPS systems could turn evil and kill people, as well as the entirety of the Sontaran plan, seemed silly. Why didn’t anyone just break a window when that happened? Three times someone was trapped in a car, yet nobody ever broke a window to get free. And the idea that the Sontarans, who are an honourable race, would think that gassing Earth while they sit in their space station was a worthy victory was ridiculous. They’re finely-tuned warriors, with straight-laced voices (seriously: I love the voices, guys), they’d surely want to go and fight face to face, wouldn’t they? And why did they need to clone Martha, when surely they could just’ve brainwashed her? It seems like a roundabout way of doing things. The new look for the baddies was great, though, but it was hard to tell what they looked more like – a baked potato? A muddy teddy bear? A melted Mr Potato Head? With their armour on, they looked like walking bottle banks. I couldn’t tell if they were meant to be adorable, or if that was just me. I hope they return after these episodes though.

There were no looks of disbelief, everything was played straight, the baddies were sympathetic and honourable, the Doctor gets some allies who aren’t morally dubious… this episode was very different from a typical Dr Who episode. All in all, The Sontaran Stratagem was short on plot, but big on character, which just about equals off as a B rating.

Rating: B

Stray Points:

• Now we have three main characters, the show really struggles to get them all in before the title sequence finishes. Considering that the last few episodes are scheduled to have six main cast members (yes – SIX!), I wonder how they’ll fix that.
• How long did it take Donna to walk to her Grandad?
• Finally the Doctor does something aggressive! He’s been sadly passive ever since the sword fight he had in his first episode.
• Pfft! Anticlimax explosions are always fun.
• Line of the Episode: Tate’s haughty. “I’ll have a salute.” “Thanks.”

Next Week: Lots of running and shouting, lots of shooting. The Sontaran attack continues.

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 3: Planet Of The Ood

If there is one thing Dr Who can do successfully, it’s repeatedly club the viewer over the head with repeated messages and characters. Seeing as the Daleks were unavailable for this episode, the writers pulled back a different set of aliens instead: the Captain Picard-apeing tentacled faces of the Ood. If you remember, the Ood appeared a while back, in a few episodes that nobody actually remembers because they were boring. Seriously, it’s hard to think of a worse alien in the history of this reinvented show than the Ood (with the possible exception of that megadalek thing, which was just wrong). The basic premise behind why the Ood exist is that they are, essentially, human slaves, and slaves = BAD. The whole point of them is to show us why we shouldn’t have slaves, and that’s all well and good until you remember that… well, we don’t actually have slaves anymore. Sigh.

The setting for the episode was on a Hoth-like ice planet where humans were processing Ood for their roles of slavery. The Doctor and Donna, after a seriously grating opening where they bicker a little inside the Tardis, land here and promptly cause trouble. From the crudely drawn opening scene, which reverts Tate quickly back to her shouty persona, almost all the humour of the episode fails miserably, from the Ood programmed with catchphrases from The Simpsons to the Doctor and Donna getting mistaken for husband and wife. The only real humour comes from the delivery of certain lines, mainly by villain of the week Tim McInnery. McInnery steals the episode effortlessly from Tennant and Tate, both of whom seem to be merely going through the motions here: Donna is shouty and overly concerned as the situation demands, while Tennant’s manic energy rapidly wears thin. As for the background characters… the real shame is that it takes most of them so long to die. There is some good work done by actor playing McInnery’s right-hand-man, but his character gets killed off for no real reason other than that it’s look interesting onscreen. Being swallowed by a giant brain? Ick!

Much of the talk this episode is about slavery, with Tate and Tennant sharing some truly awful dialogue between them about the Ood’s situation. Again, this is exactly one of the problems that has been facing Dr Who recently – the Doctor seems to have no sort of tactical mind. He has no plan for how to free the Ood, and does nothing useful throughout the episode. If The Doctor and Donna hadn’t been here, the events would have played out in the exact same order. Storytelling is a big problem with the series, as each episode generally is designed to stand alone, and an entire story has to be told in each one. This means that many things get shoehorned in for no reason – why did they lock Donna in a container with members of the Ood, for example? The scene with the crane was very well done, but why did the guard do that? The progressive points of the story simply happened as a series of set-pieces, with no reasoning put in between them. Having said this, the basic plot was simple enough, and provided a reasonably entertaining tale, if mainly for McInnery. I imagine after reading the script he realised his character was as two-dimensional as they come, and he hams it up a treat here. Watching his villain turn into an Ood was unexpected – but if you watch the episode again, there is an astonishing amount of foreshadowing going on. Sure, the idea was stolen from ‘Angel’, but when an idea is stolen so well, who cares?

One thing that disappointed me was how quickly they blitzed through the idea of aliens. Donna is meeting them for the first time here, but her shock is largely ignored as a story, in favour of more time with the Ood. The character is constantly ruined by the writing in this episode, especially in the scene where she complains that she wants to go home. Donna isn’t a teenager like the last two companions have been, she’s a grown woman, and it feels like poor writing to have her react like a child. Pointless, too, when you realise how quickly the idea is dismissed at the end. The main flaw with the episode, though, lies with the Ood. They’re just so dull. It’s damn tricky to sympathise with characters that don’t DO anything, and just the mention of the phrase “Ood breeding farms” means that I have to downgrade the episode. And despite the happy ending, I don’t see how freeing the hive brain of the Ood stops them from being slaves. They all become interconnected, yes, but the processed Ood had their brains lobotomised – how does that get reversed simply by freeing the brain? Like a lot of things here, it’s a progression that nobody questions, which leaves the viewer feeling shortchanged. Overall, the episode promised very little, and gave us roughly what we expected it would from the preview. I’m tired of seeing the same sort of thing every episode – new stories, please!

Episode Rating: D


Stray Points:

• Shoehorned mention of the week: the missing bees.
• The humans who run the facility know an awful lot about our time, considering it’s the year 4000 or something. How do they remember The Simpsons, or Foot and Mouth?
• All songs have to end – huh. Will the 10th Doctor live to see the next series?
• Line of the Week: McInnery’s pithy comeback: “Good observation, ginger” to Tate, when she exclaims he just killed someone. Hey, it was a poor episode for one-liners, okay?

Next week: The Doctor stares into the adorable face of death.

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 2: The Fires of Pompeii

We were promised an eruption for the second episode of Dr Who’s fourth season, and by heck, we got one. Donna and The Doctor found themselves in Pompeii a day before the volcano was due to erupt, and after a series of confusing events ended up detonating Vesuvius personally, killing 20,000-odd people in the process. It was, needless to say, rather a darker episode of Doctor Who than usual. James Moran, who wrote the actually-very-bleak horror comedy “Severance” was behind the goings-on of this episode, and struck just the right balance of comedy and bleak horror here, setting things up to be a light hearted romp through olden days before eventually finishing with one of the most morally fascinating moments of the entire show so far.

But first, let’s just get this down. How fantastic did everything look this episode? Everything was shot on location at the set they sued for “Rome”, and the details and life of the people seemed completely real. In a sense, this was the most realistic and believable trip back in time that we’ve seen yet, and much of this must boil down to the way Moran doesn’t try to explain the goings-on particularly, instead focusing much of the episode on a family of Romans, headed up by Peter Capaldi (the nasty one from The Thick If It, who in a complete role-reversal played a nice guy). The family scenes sparkled in the way they mirrored modern times, but with a few twists – “go and pray forgiveness to the household Gods!” – and truly made us care about if these four people lived or died. You would imagine that as a result the other characters would fade into the background, but no, Donna and the Doctor both got some tremendous scenes during the episode, especially towards the end. Catherine Tate got a lot of stick for her character, but up until now has only ever acted in Russell T. Davies’ episodes. Coupled with a better writer, she seems much more likable. Tate, a superb actress, completely sells the intensity of the final few scenes with a dynamic acting performance that for the first time shows Tennant’s Doctor in a negative light. In return, Tennant ups his game, and the episode benefits enormously for it. As Donna walks through Pompeii as the ash falls, the sense of loss is palpable, and when Tennant goes back to the Tardis without helping the family you can see the decision weighing on her character whether to stay or not. Hopefully, this will quieten all those who had criticised her before, because it truly was a superb performance.

The performances were universally excellent, which helps when the plot makes only vague sense. The scenes with the cult populated entirely by women didn’t seem to have any real purpose in regards to the rest of the plot, although the effects on the woman turned into stone were great. Listening to her announce her real name though, I have no idea what she said it was, even after re-listening to the scene... There was never any interest in what would happen to these characters, and they seemed to be forgotten about entirely by the end as the plot focused instead more on the other soothsayer. Phil Davies did what he could with the character, and one of the best scenes in an episode filled with good scenes was when he and the daughter had a sooth-off, predicting various aspects about Donna and the Doctor. Towards the end he, too, seemed pretty one-dimensional, and the episode would have been better for picking one baddie or the other. Having two different baddies who essentially served the same purpose just took time away from the central plot and the actual monsters. They looked vaguely like transformers, and died amazingly easily (one bucket of water = death, seemingly), and again, didn’t seem developed enough.

There were so many little touches throughout, though – did you catch the reference to the Shadow Proclamation? – that the plot didn’t really matter. The joy was in the script, which sparkled one-liners. The idea that if someone from the Tardis speaks Latin to… Latin folk, it translates into Welsh resulted in several whispered one liners from Capaldi (translating one piece of Latin as “look you”), and Tennant’s delivery of the line “I am… Spartacus” was hilarious, especially as Tate then joined in with “No, I am Spartacus”. The Doctor pulling out a water pistol was unexpected and brilliant, and again these silly moments counteracted the very dark shift in tone that took place at the end. I thought the Doctor was right to leave the family behind, but at the same time I was happy when he came back for them – it felt right. And good work to the director for not trying to dilute the darkness. It made the entire scene of the eruption (which was very realistic) seem so much more important.

This was a great episode of Doctor Who, mixing light and dark moments with a storyline that had characters who were interesting. I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing us return to Rome for another episode sometime in the future.

Episode Rating: A


Stray Points:

• How did they move the Tardis into the family home so quickly?
• I was worried the ending would see Rose appear again, but instead we got a nicely underplayed finale with the family. Good stuff!
• The magical Sonic Screwdriver was mostly absent this episode, although he used it ocne to knock some computer chips off a shelf. Couldn’t he have just, y’know, knocked them off himself? The Doctor is getting lazy…
• I wish I had a pond in my front room.
• Line of the Episode: Tate’s furious “I’ll surrender you in a minute!”

Next week: Remember those rubbish Ood aliens from last season? They’re back, to be rubbish all over again.

Doctor Who Series 4, Episode 1: Partners In Crime

And so Doctor Who returns, with another revamp of the opening music and a new (in a manner of speaking) Companion, in the form of Catherine Tate’s Donna, previously from the episode “The Runaway Bride”. Her character previously came off as under-developed and shouty, and, hilariously, this remains the case.

As soon as the name of the writer for this episode came up, we knew what we’d be in for: a reasonable story with an unsatisfactory ending and no interesting female characters. See, Russell T. Davies wrote this episode, and he has proved time and time again that although a good showrunner, he in no way should be allowed to write for the programme. Several oft-repeated ideas returned in the opening episode, from the idea that every woman who appears for some reason has to fancy the doctor (in this case an office-worker who gave him her phone-number) to the forced references to things that will happen in the next few episodes. In the grand tradition of the not-so-subtle references to Bad Wolf or John Saxon, expect to see more about bees in the next few episodes.

Davies’ clichés apart, there was much to like with the first episode. Sarah Lancaster bit into her role as a creepy alien version Mary Poppins with relish, and the fact the effects department chose not to turn into her true form bodes well for the future. We don’t need to see a CGI monster every episode, and instead we got treated to a full episode of Lancaster scowling away like a bedevilled supernanny. Giving her a sonic pen was a nice touch, too. On the other hand, the little Adipose creatures she was growing were meant to be adorable, but didn’t anyone else think them incredibly creepy? When they were swarming down the street, it was surprising that none of the pedestrians watching didn’t try to punt one of them.

David Tennant essentially runs the entire program to his quirky beats, now. He is fully installed in the role, and can even make the Doctor’s questionable ideas seem like they’re smart – escaping in a window-cleaners hatch? When the guards following you have been given machine-guns? Not the smartest move for the Doctor, who for the entire episode seemed to be completely lost without a companion to stop him doing stupid things. This is where Tate steps in. Donna has stopped with the pointless shouting, but instead has turned into a combination of Tate’s sketch-show characters Lauren, swearing Nan, and Derek “how very dare you” Faye. Tate is a great actress, but is given barely anything to do with her character in this episode. Her miming left a lot to be desired too, which made one extended sequence with her and The Doctor mouthing their plans to each other extremely annoying to try and work out.

Although the episode was entertaining, the leaps of faith it continually took in order to progress the plot was distracting. Why did the Doctor, who has a time machine, walk into Lancaster’s lair and wait a day in the broom closet until the staff had left before he made a move? Couldn’t he have, y’know, teleported into the building after dark, and saved a lot of waiting? How come Lancaster took so long to dispatch the Doctor when he was dangling off the side of a building? What rankles the most is the way we are meant to believe her character would be scared of an intergalactic law chamber finding out about her plan. The Daleks have tried to take over the Universe three of four times now, and no intergalactic police have ever tried to stop them. The thought that these aliens here with their super-cool spaceship would be even remotely scared of this seemed illogical, to say the least.

Having said all this, the episode was fun enough, and provided at least one “OhmiGod” moment towards the end (did you see it? Wow!) Season openers are always tricky to get right in terms of tone, and although the plot was nonsensical, Tennant and Tate did a great job of distracting from it.

Episode Rating: B-


Stray Points:

• The Doctor has a hand-held tracker device that can miraculously point him to aliens made of human fat? Where did he get that from?
• Why did the fire door explode every time The Doctor used his sonic screwdriver on it?
• I bet Looney Tunes must’ve been dead proud with that “walking on the air” moment experienced by Lancaster’s character just before her demise.
• Line of the Episode: Tennant’s “I’m with health and safety… film department.”

Next week: Looks like Doc and Donna picked a right stupid day to go visit Pompeii.