Doctor Who!

[arcadia]

Hmm, I heard that rumour a few days ago and I thought it had since been debunked. The Sun does have quite a good record on Who though - they got Billie leaving and Kylie joining (though they probably also had several other rumours which turned out not to be true but those ones get forgotten).

To be honest, I was expecting DT to leave at the end of series 4 anyway - 3 years is probably enough for someone who no doubt has a lot of other offers right now, however much of a Who geek he is, and with RTD leaving too (which is pretty certain I think?) I wouldn't be surprised to see DT go at the same time.

I'm not keen on James Nesbitt taking over though - I don't have the hatred for him that a lot of people seem to have, but I can't really see him as the Doctor. I liked him well enough in Jekyll and Cold Feet - can't really think of anything else I've seen him in - but he does get accused of playing 'James Nesbitt' in everything and I can kind of see that.

I'd be sad to see DT go, but on the other hand I reckon in a year I'll be ready for a change. But hopefully not to James Nesbitt!

[Mirela]

I'd like Bill Nighy to be the 11th Doctor, he's older but still cool! I'd never considered James Nesbitt to be honest, and as I haven't seen anything he's acted in I can't really comment on how good in the role he'd be (or not). It's still just a rumour though, David may stay on for the 5th series!

[Storm]

It seems the big returning villains from the past for the new season will be the Sontarans, with another cameo appearance from Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, and the great Ben Kingsley takes on the timeless role of... DAVROS!

As my brother was saying to me earlier, "So they've come up with another excuse for a completely superfluous re-appearance by the Daleks..."

[Mirela]

I think the Daleks are great, so I won't be complaining - it's about time Davros returned anyway, he's a favourite Who villian of mine I wouldn't mind it if he made a whole new lot of Imperial Daleks, with a few Special Weapons Daleks thrown in for good measure ;D

[Storm]

So... seconds out, round 4!

Dr Who returns in the shape of Partners In Crime... and it's a lukewarm start at best I'm afraid. There are some alterations to the format that I like. The modification to Murray Gold's title track - first used in the Christmas episode - is definitely an improvement; the version that started with the Eccleston season always left me a bit cold, but the new version has more of an edge to it. Also, David Tennant has managed to go through a whole episode without needlessly pulling the crank in any real way at all, which is big kudos to him.

A welcome relief is that the incidental music was generally far subtler. That is, up until the inducer scene, when all the usual over-the-top material started up, trying to convince us that there's something dreadfully scary about a lot of ankle-high waddling blobs of cholesterol.

To the story itself. Not awful, but the air of making up the plot as they go along remains pervasive. It really does feel like they wanted a bringing-together moment for the Doctor and Donna, and felt they should include a plot as an optional extra. There was a very similar feeling to School Reunion in retrospect, with Sarah Jane investigating alien weirdness on her own and running into the Doctor who 'just happens' to be investigating the same thing; there's a strong feeling that the whole point of the episode is merely to bring them together, with the story tacked on simply to offer a backdrop.

On the subject of Sarah Jane, the plot is similar to the fizzy drinks story in The Sarah Jane Adventures, as is the guest villainess in some ways. It doesn't really help. I quite liked the manner in which Sarah Lancashire's character got her comeuppance at the end, mind, and the earnestness with which the Doctor tried to save her, showing that he's finally rediscovered that he doesn't always have to be ruthless or sanctimonious.

Catherine Tate does well in the first half of the episode, sounding more restrained and reflective than at any time in The Runaway Bride, which gave me some cause for hope at first, but from the moment she sees the Doctor she reverts to non-stop-screamer type and becomes exactly the monumental pain-in-the-neck I feared she will be. Please, Martin, be wrong!

On the subject of her meeting the Doctor, I'm afraid the scenes of them just missing each other are another of those tedious old comic routines that have been with us a long, long time, and that the series seems to love so much. I saw an almost identical routine in out-takes from Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie eleven years ago, and the joke already seemed pretty worn-out then. The bit with them sign-languaging to each other through the windows was slightly better, but it was still pretty tiresome and stupid.

The attempts at humour all the way through were lame in fact. About the only line that made me grin was, "Do yourself a favour... get out!" and even that's not exactly Disraeli-class wit is it?

Bernard Cribbins was good as Donna's Grandad. It's not his first outing in Dr. Who, as he played a policemen in the 60's movie, Dalek Invasion Of Earth 2150. And for all its twee-ness, I did rather enjoy the final scene with him seeing the tiny blue box of the TARDIS in the night sky through the telescope. I think the reason I liked it is that it draws the Doctor away from that in-story status of 'celebdom' and 'messianism' that he seems to have developed in recent times. Instead, he's gone back to being one small, slightly obscure and bizarre figure in a vast universe again, which is what he should be really. A hero, yes, but not letting himself get dragged into the limelight.

This leads me onto a broader point about the episode, and indeed about new Who in general, and I think it has led me to realise what it is that keeps me from feeling love for the revived series.

It's a problem most prevalent in episodes set on present-day Earth, like Rose, Aliens Of London, Love & Monsters, Army Of Ghosts, and Last Of The Time-Lords, and shows a reversal of perspective that doesn't sit easily with me. Most of the time when setting a story in the modern world, classic Dr Who would give you the real world, and then introduce something alien and aggressive/insidious into it. There lay the terror, to see the world you know endangered by something from the very limits of imagination.

Unfortunately, at least when you-know-who is writing, the world and its population get turned into mere strange caricatures of what we know, behaving in a highly exaggerated and implausible manner, something that we don't relate to with sympathy so much as mockery. (The worst example of this is the way the whole world just spontaneously and collectively 'decided' to fall in love with the apparitions in Army Of Ghosts.) It is no longer just the aliens that are unreal and dream-like. The Earth and its people are as well. When a world we see as utterly surreal is threatened by something else surreal, it just doesn't inspire the same sense of dread.

A few observations of mild curiosity...

Parts of the episode were clearly filmed in the same place that The Runaway Bride was filmed, most obviously in the underground passage.

When DT does that toothy giggle, he doesn't half sound like Frank Spencer.

Doesn't Penny look like Martha Jones?! Between her and Rose's utterly superfluous and (thankfully) wordless cameo, there seems to be a growing obsession with gratuitously nodding to the series' own recent past. (This feeling is reinforced by recent announcements; John Barrowman and Elisabeth Sladen have revealed that they will be back, while Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri will be re-appearing as well.)

I will give a bonus point, more for the series as a whole than for this episode, for clearly ruling that there isn't going to be another gushing love affair between the Doctor and his assistant, at least for now. It's been a tiresome detail that's really gotten in the way of many of the stories over the last couple of years, so I'm happy not to have to sit through a third round of it. But even here, it could've been handled better. The Doctor's "I-just-want-a-mate" speech is yet another example of Russell T. Davies' tell-don't-show style of writing about emotions. He seems to insist on hitting the audience over the head from the word go with what he plans to do, as though he hopes it will reassure those of us who wanted the Doctor to get away from those kinds of relationships for a bit and just concentrate on exploring time and space. So now we know that there's a change of approach in the offing, which is welcome, but it would sound a lot more natural if the stories simply progressed without any mention of that sort of thing at all.

So, all-in-all, the episode's yet another clumsy, cack-handed bit of writing, and while it's nowhere near as bad as Last Of The Time Lords or even Voyage Of The Damned, equally it's not a start that brings much hope for the immediate future. However, next week's sojourn to the Roman Empire - a la the excellent First Doctor story The Romans - looks a lot more enticing from the teaser, so I won't judge yet.

Bottom line for this one... only 4/10, I fear. Not awful, but very weak stuff.

[Storm]

The Fires Of Pompeii.

Uuurrrgghhh... not a long review this week, because I just couldn't be bothered getting annoyed with the episode, and that means I couldn't get fired up enough to write about it - or even to remember it, truth be told. It was pretty feeble stuff again.

Overall, it was doing its best to make up for its general lack of imagination or insight by trying to sound clever, which it hoped to achieve by having a lot of very quickfire, pseudo-clever dialogue. The result of it is a very dizzy, incoherent story, and despite how quickly everyone speaks - or perhaps even because of it - it in fact moves rather slowly; the manic rabbiting, especially between the Doctor and Donna, keeps putting the plot on hold waiting for them to finish the banter. The only time when the plot and the dialogue move at the same speed is during the closing few minutes when the Doctor finally slows down enough to agonise over the ethical dilemma.

To be fair, those few minutes were rather good, as it is a very valid question to raise, and David Tennant does inspire some sympathy as his mood veers between stony-hearted silence and tearful guilt. But it's not as if the "Should-I-use-time-travel-to-save-someone-who-I-know-has-already-died?" dilemma is anything new to Dr Who, is it? It's old, old ground - look at The Time Meddler, look at Timeflight - and so inevitably I was left a little non-plussed by it all.

It also doesn't help that Catherine Tate was just bloody awful at every step of the story. On this evidence, I just can't imagine what they saw that convinced them that it would be a good idea to bring her back. She makes a half-amusing sketch actress - not the same as a good comedy actress, which she isn't - but she is absolutely hopeless at doing drama, even light entertainment. This is because she only seems to have the ability to do emotions by shorthand, all of her character attempts descending into caricature in keeping with her rather tepid sketch show.

To be fair to Tate, the guest cast were no better. I don't think I've ever seen such a lazy, on-auto-pilot performance from Peter Capaldi, while the two teenagers were so wooden I honestly thought their limbs would crack in a high wind.

The story is quite basic, the new monsters (I forget their name) are not very different from many of the other monsters introduced since 2005, and a lot of the dialogue is hopelessly anachronistic, a failing that can only be slightly mitigated by reference to the TARDIS' translation circuits.

I had high hopes for this one, especially as it wasn't written by RTD, but of course that won't offer any guarantees. In the event this episode was a very smug, very scrappy bit of work. 4/10 again.

[Storm]

Planet Of The Ood.

Now that's more like it! For the first time in a long while - probably since Blink last year in fact - we have a good episode of Dr Who. Still short of great by a furlong, nevertheless we got a plot for a change (what will they think of next?), and the moral themes were explored in a far less heavy-handed manner than last week. They were also fresher.

It always helps to have an episode set on a planet other than Earth for a change, and I must admit I do like the Ood. I think they're easily more interesting than any other monster introduced in new Who to date. It was good finally seeing a follow-up to the moral issue that was rather skated over in The Satan Pit two years ago (read post #127 at juliasplace.proboards59.com/v45index.cgi?board=tv&action=display&thread=68&page=9), an omission that the Doctor himself effectively admitted to in the dialogue here. Properly understanding the true nature of their enslavement is important, especially as it is now revealed just why the Ood always appeared happy with being slaves. It wasn't because they were naturally submissive, but because they were brainwashed into forgetting the whole concept of freedom. It makes them some of the most poignant monsters - if monsters they truly are - ever to feature in Dr Who, and I hope to see them again in the near future. Big credit to Keith Temple for identifying a very rich vein of story potential (and I don't just say that because I identified it myself several years ago).

Mucho credit also to Tim McInerney for his performance as the Mr Halpen, the villainous corporate officer; it was clearly written to be another lazy, whimsical caricature, and he triumphs above it by refusing to play up the sillier lines and running gags in the self-conscious, zany way most other actors have gone for in similar roles over the last couple of years. Instead he keeps the gags suitably understated, and concentrates far more on conveying the inner tension and turmoil of a man in a position of responsibility, under too much corporate pressure to bother with issues such as morality. He made for quite a strong villain, but also a more sympathetic one than the run-of-the-mill bad guys who have littered many recent stories.

The resolution was far better work than normal too, with no sorcery get-outs or lazy technobabble with which the writer could save himself the bother of thinking. Feeding drugs into the villain to cause him to change into an Ood was... well, different certainly, and while the loyal-butler-who-turns-assassin-to-slay-his-own-master is not exactly a new idea, at least there was a fresh angle in its motivations. And the transformation, while a little implausible, was genuinely creepy to see. Hey, I was eating my dinner just in time to see a new Ood cough up its tentacles and sneeze out a new brain! Delightful... (that is a genuine compliment!)

It's not all smiles though. The opening scenes with more of the usual fabricated excited squealing from Donna were slightly painful, doubly so with the Doctor giving another of his unsubtle, recycled lectures about how boring conventional human lives are. And that Simpsons gag was another jarring pop-culture reference in a story set far too far into the future to sound at all natural or plausible. Meanwhile, the info-dump scene with the activist-traitor revealing himself and announcing his activities of the last few years for no apparent reason was exposition of a very amateurish order.

More seriously, there was very much a sense of the Doctor and Donna simply being along for the ride. The whole conflict would have resolved itself in much the same way had they not been there at all, as they spent most of the story observing and reacting and getting captured, while the Ood effected their own rebellion without need for outside help at all. Indeed, it was the Ood who rescued the Doctor and Donna at the end and not the other way round. Refreshing in one sense, but it's hard to escape the impression that Doc'n'Don were a bit superfluous. You do wonder why the Ood expressed such adoring gratitude at the end.

All right, so the Doctor did have a useful role to play in defusing the explosives at the last moment, but even that was just another case of simply hitting the off-switch. Anyone could have done that.

These flaws are not major, and the far greater depth and measured plot-advancement comfortably made up for them. No, it's not a classic episode, but it's the only decent one we've had since Blink, and that alone makes for a source of some relief. I give it 7/10.

Next the return of the Sontarans for the first time since The Two Doctors. Might be interesting, if their return is handled differently from the way the Daleks' and the Cybermen's were handled in seasons past.

[Storm]

The Sontaran Strategem.

What a clunky title! And the bad news doesn't stop there.

I tend to find, when I'm watching an episode of Dr Who with the Sontarans in it and they're the most interesting thing on show, that the story's in trouble. They really are just Who's hairless Klingons, so I don't hold them in high regard. The trouble is, they're probably what I hold in highest regard here.

This isn't to say I didn't enjoy the episode at all, it's just most of the pleasure I took was of the guilty variety. A guilty snigger at the acting-by-shorthand of the guest cast, a shamed giggle at the painfully out-of-character strategy of the returning monsters, a red-faced chortle at the lazy, by-the-numbers plotting, and a discreet chuckle at the heavily-derivative scenario.

The opening scene of the Doctor teaching Donna how to control the TARDIS was all right - nice to have them using their time constructively rather than just standing around wittering much too fast for a change - but it's not exactly a moment that breaks giddy heights, and it's largely downhill from there.

When the TARDIS arrives on Earth, Martha and Donna meet for the first time. The conversation that follows seems to be a very deliberate, very self-conscious turning-of-the-tables on the nasty sniping that took place between Sarah Jane and Rose back in School Reunion. Like with the Doctor's "I-just-want-a-mate" monologue in Partners In Crime, they're right to avoid a re-run of things past, but, also like in Partners In Crime, they're wrong to shout at the audience from the rooftops about it. Let us make the comparisons for ourselves, dammit, we're not thick!

The Sontaran Stratagem must be just about the most jarringly-paced Dr Who story I've ever seen, and it really ruins some genuine good details; the episode is quite engrossing at times early on as the plot unfolds quite rapidly and smoothly, but then you can hear the brakes screeching and the driver's head clattering into the dashboard as we're 'treated' to another of new Who's Obligatory Emotional Exposition_TM moments, with Donna being warned to be careful of travelling with the Doctor. From there, the episode keeps speeding up and slowing down like one of UNIT's jeeps with engine trouble as it tries to cover the actual storyline, while being forced to make room for the manufactured business with Donna's family.

This second scene between Martha and Donna is basically another rehash - a direct one this time - of a conversation between Sarah Jane and Rose in School Reunion. These rehashes are symptoms of a far worse problem with the story, which is that every key plot and character element on display appears to have been derived from somewhere else in recent Who history.

Let's start with Atmos; here be the likely thought processes... "Hmm, we need a mystery for the story to open with. I know, we'll have a successful new item of technology on the market with a cool-sounding name, which suddenly turns out to be part of an infiltration plan by a hostile alien. We haven't used that idea before have we? Well, except for the chip fat in School Reunion of course. Er, and that orange drink in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Oh yes, and the diet pills in Partners In Crime..." (for pete's sake, guys! That was just three weeks ago, and you're already using the same plot device? At least, pretend you're trying.) In this case, it's a sat-nav system rather than something people eat, but does that distinction really count for anything?

Next we have all that sh*t about Donna's family. Is there really anything to distinguish her mum from Rose's or Martha's? They're all the same! They all talk much too fast, they appear constitutionally-incapable of listening to anybody, they all whinge about how much housework they have to do, they always rant about what a terrible burden their husbands/children are, and they all hate the Doctor when they meet him! You know, I'm starting to wonder whether we're dealing with another renegade Time Lord; -

"First we had... the Doctor. Then we had the... Meddling Monk. Next we brought you... the Master! Then came... the Rani. And now, we bring unto you... the Companion's Mother!"

Only when this Time Lord regenerates, only her appearance changes. Her personality doesn't shift one bloody iota! The series has created its own clichés, and is sticking to them like glue.

Then we come to the overall scenario. As mentioned, Atmos is just a tired old plot device used more than once before, including in this very season. But look at what it's part of. It's the first gambit of an alien invasion of Earth... again. I mean, come on, how many more bloody times is there going to be a giant fleet of alien invaders poised above the Earth, ready to move in and take over? First we had the Unquiet Dead invading through Cardiff, then we had the Slitheen, then we had the Daleks of the year 20,000. Hot on their heels (or at least it would be if the Daleks had feet), we had the Sycorax. Then came the Cybermen from a parallel Earth, in conflict with another huge Dalek army. Then came the Toclafane. I might even have missed out one or two others in between times. I swear, I find more and greater variation of plot every time I play Space Invaders on my old 286.

Even the popularity of the Atmos devices has an echo of the past, not least in its unconvincing scale. Everyone appears to have one. Why? It's not completely clear, but it seems that everyone has decided they must have one on their car. I didn't realise sat-navs were so trendy, I thought they were pretty much a novelty, nothing more. But not here. Apparently every car owner wants a sat-nav, and furthermore, they all have to have the Atmos brand. The whole population of Earth of one mind again, and all making the same decision and taking the same action simultaneously, just as in Army Of Ghosts and Last Of The Time Lords. And just as implausibly.

On the subject of implausible, the Sontaran plan is far too elaborate to swallow. Neither is it in their nature to resort to infiltration, nor do the circumstances make it necessary for them to do so. The Sontarans themselves state very early on that the weapons of the Earth, even those belonging to UNIT, are far too primitive and can easily be neutralised, so why would they resort to this hugely over-cooked plan to infiltrate the satellite networks of Earth? Why not try the honourable, in-your-face approach they've always loved and attack directly? This unconvincing contrivance, again, feels familiar, because it seems as pointlessly indirect as the Daleks' ridiculous Big Brother games at the start of Bad Wolf.

Even the American boy-genius, Luke Rattigan, feels like something we've seen before. To me, he feels like a cross between Adam and Henry van Statten from Dalek. Even if he isn't, he's still a tedious stereotype, a la the trio of nerds from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

While the recycling is merely annoying, the cliffhanger at the end is laughable, for two reasons. Firstly, I can't believe that it hasn't occurred to the Doctor simply to try breaking the window instead of trying more and more fiddly tricks with the door-lock. That's at least ten stupid points to him. Second, this must be the most feeble poisonous gas ever used in warfare, if, after several full minutes of exposure, Wilfrid is not only still alive, but is in fact still conscious.

Incongruities do the story no favours either. UNIT continuing to use the Atmos devices even while they're exercising a military occupation of the factory doesn't wash at all. Who cares if they've been ordered to keep using them? Just remove them and don't tell anyone; surely you won't have informed the higher authorities about attacking the production line, and they don't appear to have noticed you doing it, so why would they notice you removing a bunch of sat-navs from your jeeps?

In fairness, the most baffling non-sequitur in the plot isn't just confined to this episode; why is Donna always such a squealing loudmouth with most people, but as soon as she gets home and talks to her mother or grandfather she suddenly quietens down and sounds rational? Don't get me wrong, it's nice to get a few moments when Catherine Tate shows that she has more than one emotion in her repertoire - in scenes with Bernard Cribbins, I swear I spot real evidence that she can, in fact, act. But the relaxed Donna just arrives completely out of nowhere. Does her mum put sedatives in the coffee so no one can interrupt her while she's nagging them, perhaps?

I liked Bernard Cribbins in Partners In Crime, and he continued to be good here initially, but after a while I began to find his constant use of the phrase "Is it aliens?!?" really grating. Not his fault I suppose, but his delivery was getting quite hammy the more he had to say it. And isn't it a very Arnold Rimmer thing to say anyway?

While we're on that topic, the general standard of the acting was poor, thanks to a typical blase attitude. Freema Agyeman, not exactly a BAFTA-winner-in-the-making to begin with, seems to have taken a ten-week "How-To-Impair-Your-Acting-Ability" course since last year - that's Torchwood to you and me - judging by her showing here. Her performance as Martha herself is very much painting-by-numbers, while as the clone she looks embarrassed. David Tennant, meanwhile, is showing signs that he's getting disillusioned with the role. He isn't bad, but there are moments that he looks a little exasperated. Can we blame him? As for whoever's playing Donna's mum, I can sum her up in four words; failed her EastEnders exam.

So why don't I hate the story? Like I say, guilty pleasure is part of it, but there were also some genuine good bits that stood out.

I loved the in-joke about the Doctor not remembering whether he worked for UNIT in the 70's or the 80's - a cute gag about the notorious clanger in the Fifth Doctor story, Mawdryn Undead (when it was stated that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart retired from the army in the late-70's, even though it was clearly-established in the Fourth Doctor's time that the UNIT stories were set in the early-80's). Nice to get a subtle bit of humour for a change.

UNIT themselves were tidily-presented - cocksure sergeant with cowardly-token-black-sidekick apart (the sergeant's head-bobbing, strutting arrogance was so self-conscious and forced, I wanted the Sontaran to kick his teeth in) - and I rather like the mild-mannered Colonel Mace. He seemed quite vulnerable at times, like a boy who finally meets his lifelong hero and realises what an ass the man is. This makes a pleasing contrast with the pompous old Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Best of all though, were the Sontarans themselves. Could've done without the cheerleader-style chanting near the end, dunno where that came from, but other than that they were very well performed, especially Christopher Ryan as Staal; he got the texture and belligerence of the voice absolutely spot-on.

So, it's not good, but has some redeeming features, and a lot of the bad stuff is bad in a way that can at least make me smirk. But for all that, this two-parter had better get its act together quick, because so far it's only enjoyable in the way that Trial Of A Time Lord is enjoyable, and that is not a compliment. 5/10

[Storm]

The Poison Sky

Okay, fair's fair, this episode was a reversal of the two-parter trend in new Who where the second part is usually greatly inferior to the first. On this occasion, it is the second part that comes close to rescuing the whole.

I slagged off much of The Sontaran Strategem, and with good reason, but The Poison Sky isn't just an improvement in the title, it manages to repair a substantial amount of the damage. Some of the ridiculous logic errors from part one have been explained away fairly soundly, and the episode was also paced far better, probably because the zaniness and suffocating sentimentality of part one were both toned down enormously (the clone's death-scene apart). Meanwhile, there was a marked improvement in some of the performances, especially Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate. Freema was still a shadow of her old self, and Catherine again never reaches the dizzy heights of average, but even so, they weren't a pain to listen to this time. And Bernard C was back to his best, head-and-shoulders above all the other regulars on show.

However, let's not get carried away, because although many of the inner details of the Sontaran plan - such as the nature of the poison gas - now make some kind of sense, the fundamentals still scream, "CONTRIVANCE!!!!!" in a very loud voice. Chiefly, I just don't get why the Sontarans chose to do things in the order that they did them.

Okay, they decided to infiltrate Earth to turn it into a breeding ground for clones, which I can buy. But why did they start out by doing that, and not leave it until after they had control of the Earth? They knew all too well that the humans would resist them. And the Sontarans, as they demonstrated once more, love a fight to the finish against an enemy that doesn't just surrender. So, why didn't they just invade Earth at the outset, destroy the military and exterminate the population, and then begin the work of seeding the planet? I suppose we might be able to infer from the conversation the Doctor had with Staal that the Sontarans were too few in number, thanks to the ravages of the war against the Rutans, to have a real chance to win, but this doesn't really tally with the way they were speaking previously about how helpless the primitive humans would be.

On the subject of the Sontarans not being quite as dominant as we were led to believe, the UNIT counter-attack with their airborne battle-cruiser rather came out of nowhere. So after all that talk about their primitive, inadequate military resources, the humans just happened to be well-enough armed after all? That's a bit feeble isn't it? Bit of a cop-out, in fact?

Rousing echoes of the credibility gaps in Aliens Of London/World War Three, we appear to have a rather bizarre situation where the defence network of an entire alliance of nations can be hacked into on someone's personal organiser. That it took Donna's mum to spot the blitheringly obvious way to rescue Wilfrid from his car means I've decided to give the Doctor an extra couple of stupid points. A stupid point also goes to Colonel Mace for somehow not noticing the Doctor supposedly contradicting himself with the "Code Red Sontaran!" / "Don't engage the Sontarans under any circumstances!!!" business.

The scenes with the newsreaders were pretty empty, and that tiresome routine with the camera zooming in really close to a TV screen so you can see the dots the picture is made up of is becoming yet another modern cliché the series has fallen in love with.

Luke Rattigan redeeming himself by sacrificing his life was also a cliché, and predictable, but I didn't mind it in fact. I guess it's just after seeing his bug-eyes routine and hearing his, "I'm-cleverer-than-you!" ranting, it was a real pleasure to see him get blown up.

Which leads me onto the latest resolution-approaching-technobabble. Not too bad this time, but the atmospheric converter perhaps needed a smidgeon more explanation to convince me that it isn't another deus ex get-out. Its effects in particular need a lot more clarifying. For instance, if the device caused a chain reaction that set fire to the gases in the upper atmosphere, why didn't it set fire to the gases at ground-level? Oh, and er, seeing it didn't set fire to the gases at ground level... where exactly did they go? How come no people appear to have been burned alive? Why did the Atmos gases get burned up, but the oxygen in the atmosphere, which should also be flammable, appears completely unaffected? Did the fires not destroy the satellites orbiting the Earth, rendering international communication impossible?

Oh, still on the subject of the wildly-unconvincing, why didn't the Martha clone just shoot the Doctor as soon as she drew the gun on him? Another repetition of the eternal question that has plagued Dr Who for decades. "Doctor, why is it they always capture and imprison you when it'd be easier if they just killed you?" - "I'll explain later." It's happened so many times, old Who and new. Really, the series should have grown out of the ancient "I-will-kill-you-but-only-after-I've-pointlessly-explained-my-plans-to-you-and-given-you-enough-time-to-stop-me" routine by now.

Pity Ross died. He was quite a smart, level-headed kid, I really quite liked him.

Couple of minor observations...

The Doctor was having another bad hair day, especially when he and Martha's clone were in the alley just after the TARDIS disappeared. And did anyone else spot a brief image of Rose on the TARDIS communication screen just before the Doctor spoke to Staal?

Colonel Mace's speech sounded suspiciously like it was lifted from President Whitmore's address to the pilots in Independence Day, while the flames filling the sky also looked reminiscent of cities being burned to the ground in that same movie.

Was the mention of the Brigadier anything other than a superfluous, unnatural continuity reference? I mean, when was Lethbridge-Stewart ever any use in these situations? Most of the time he'd come up with the same unimaginative methods the Colonel was resorting to, usually resulting in a blazing row with the Doctor. So why would the Doctor now assume that help from him of all people could save the day? "Are you my Mummy?" could be seen as another continuity shot, but at least it flowed naturally from what was going on, more or less.

Some extra pluses...

The Doctor's pomposity about guns thankfully didn't dominate the episode, and I suppose you could even argue that the story demonstrates a sad truth that George Orwell once noted; in many situations, those who are self-righteous about violence can only be so because others are committing violence on their behalf. The portrayal of the Sontarans was again terrific; they've got to get Chris Ryan back if they appear in another story in the future. "Have I ever told you how much I hate you?" was a great line for a reunion moment, and again Tate was rather convincing in the scenes with her family. And I think DT was pretty good, didn't pull the crank too hard in the now Obligatory Doctor-Has-A-Dramatic-Revelation moment - or perhaps I'm just too used to it by now to react violently to it anymore - and over the piece he played the part with a kind of nervous authority that the story probably needed. Still get the feeling he looks a bit disillusioned with the series though.

Aaaaahhhhh, not another "What?! What?! What?!" moment at the end. And is Martha about to become the new incarnation of Tegan, always screaming at the Doctor to try and get her home? As for the trailer... wow! The Doctor's daughter is hot! Can she really be Susan's mum?

Overall, it's still far too silly and the flaws are too fundamental to rescue it. But individually this episode props it up somewhat. It almost feels like it's the second half of a better story than the one it's actually latched onto. I'll give it a 7/10. Taking the story as a two-parter, however, it's still less than the sum of its parts because the entire basis of the plot was completely out-of-kilter, and so I can only give it a 5/10.

[Storm]

The Doctor's Daughter

You know, I'm probably gonna be appalled at myself in the morning for saying this, wondering what the hell possessed me, but I have to admit it. I really, really liked this episode. It's not saying much, but it's easily the best episode so far this year, and although it was laden with cliches, it handled most of them in ways so fresh and imaginative that they seemed like brand new ideas. Oh yes, and Peter Davison's daughter is absolutely gorgeous, which helped.

In answer to my own question from last week's trailer, it turns out that no, she isn't Susan's mum. Thank goodness. Randomly encountering a powerful and dangerous warrior who turns out to be a family member is a sci-fi cliche as old as the Star Wars films, but making her out to be a brand new entity instead makes a big difference - even if genetic engineering is a pretty tired sci-fi concept in its own right. But I can forgive that, because it's done differently. And because Georgia Moffett is absolutely gorgeous.

Jenny Raytion (I'm assuming that's her full name from Donna's words) is a very likeable character - played by a stunningly gorgeous actress, in case I forgot to mention it - but her name is clearly ripped off from Genny the Genetic Mutant in the Red Dwarf episode Polymorph. And comparisons with Buffy The Vampire Slayer are inevitable, and probably correct. But what the hell. She's too gorgeous for me to care...

Sorry! Must concentrate!

The war-that-has-continued-for-generations scenario is another idea that's so overused and so dated it should be embarrassing, Terry Nation-fodder at his recycling worst. But the stunning revelation that the war is also only seven days old casts it in a totally different light. And speaking of stunning, that's the word I have for Georgia...

The Hath weren't especially scary or original aliens - aquatic or piscine creatures have been used in stories like The Sea Devils before - while the theme of human enslavement of other species in Planet Of The Ood is picked up on and taken further here, as the humans appear the more bigoted and aggressive of the two species at war. There may be a subtext here - a sad rarity in exposition-heavy new Who - in that the Hath may possibly be another race of slaves, like the Ood before them, and the reason the terraforming device will be so decisive in the war is because the signs are that it will turn the planet into a world more suitable for the Terrans than the Hath. It's good to be reminded that humans, so quick to insult people who do harm as being 'like animals', are the only species on Earth that is capable of genuine evil.

The performances from the regulars were uniformly the best they've produced all year - David Tennant finally takes himself off autopilot, and even Catherine Tate was remarkably self-contained and composed as Donna (except when going on about past temping roles on her CV again) - while the guest cast were uniformly mediocre; Nigel Terry, most famous for playing King Arthur in Excalibur in 1981, was predictably silly-sounding and unconvincing as General Cobb (and I'm speaking as a fellow West Countryman there), The exception among the guests is Georgia of course, who was, is, and always will be, the most perfect example of perfection EVER! And I don't want to hear any arguments, got it? Leave her alone. *Folds arms stubbornly and pouts.*

There were a few cliches and contrivances that didn't work so well.

Firstly, Jenny seems to be talked into becoming a non-militant rather too quickly and easily. Perhaps I'd have felt more persuaded if she had seen more examples of mercy in action first, rather than just deciding it must be true because the Doctor said so; given how nasty he was generally being to her, I'd have thought she would have been more resistant to his hypocrisy about soldiers.

The great treasure of religious adoration that just happens to be a scientific instrument - usually referred to in mythology as "the boon" - is a very staid plot device. That it was a terraforming unit is nothing terribly original either (although as my brother points out to me, there really was no way it could be anything else, given the situation).

The moment when Jenny snogs the lucky b*stard to steal his gun has been done so many times in the past they might have held up a placard from A Question Of Sport asking "What happens next?" at the start of the scene. I mean, seducing-your way-out-of-prison was even done at least twice in Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, and heaven help any series that feels the need to copy ideas from there.

Martha's sideline role with the Hath, especially her detour to the planet surface, was almost totally irrelevant to the plot, and feels like enormous padding, like a typical Episode 3 from the old series. And it was sad that there was no follow-up on her Hath companion falling into the tar-pit. Her reunion with the others - she just happened to run into them after getting into the tower - was brought about entirely by coincidence rather than by rescue or ingenuity, underlining how throwaway her role in the story was; there really was no reason for her to be in the episode at all, as any part she had in helping to explore the Hath race could just as easily have been given to Donna.

Speaking of Donna, the "We're-not-a-couple!!!" gag wasn't funny to begin with, and has now worn out completely. No more. Please!

The scene when Jenny is gunned down was another excuse for a blubber, but for once the tears didn't actually flow, while the emotion arose entirely naturally from the storyline. This is a refreshing contrast with the usual tack of putting the story on hold for superfluous emotional exposition. The Doctor's eventual acceptance of his daughter parallels Pete's eventual acceptance of Rose in season 2, but seems more convincing, and certainly more relevant. The Doctor pointing the gun at Cobb didn't fool me for a moment, I knew he wouldn't do it in cold blood. And thankfully his follow-up speech, rather than spilling over into sanctimony or demagoguery, was simple, blunt anger of someone who clearly feels too tired and hurt to bother explaining.

The resolution, sadly, just began to veer towards deus ex machina, although without quite being guilty of spilling over the edge completely. A kind of bomb that turns a lifeless planetoid into a teeming paradise is at least as old as the second Star Trek film, probably older, and how it works so fast and on so wide a scale is not really explained. (They might just as well have had Rodimus Prime walk in and unleash the power of the Autobot Matrix Of Leadership.) And the manner in which Jenny was revived was both a little predictable and, not for the first time, distinctly sorcery-like. I'll be generous and assume that it was exposure to gases from the terraforming device, possibly aided by her Time Lord physiology... or something. It's reasonable enough to give it the benefit of the doubt anyway. I admit I was delighted to see her revived - oh she's so gorgeous - and her enthusiasm for adventure certainly resembles the Doctor's own. Almost certainly she's going to have her own spin-off series, which isn't good news really, because you just know it's going to be a lazy Buffy rip-off for the sake of cashing-in a bit further. But Georgia will be in it, so I'll watch it!

Overall, a terrifically clever way of breathing new life into a number of tired old plot ideas, as well as breathing desperately-needed life into a season that's been dying in the fires of its own triteness. For the first time all year, we have a break from formula, even though it did a good job of disguising itself as the absolute opposite. It also underlines the importance of taking the series away from Earth more often, as it allows room for so many different scenarios and ideas.

I give The Doctor's Daughter a very rare mark for me, 9/10.

Oh and in case I haven't made myself clear; Georgia... yes, definitely.

[Storm]

The Unicorn & The Wasp.

Oh dear lord...

You know, this looked a fairly promising story, even though it was yet another adherence-to-formula. A murder mystery with Agatha Christie as a guest star sounds like quite a neat idea, if a little too similar to The Unquiet Dead and The Shakespeare Code, but the story in practise gets lost in a tidal wave of sloppy logic, plotting short cuts, shallow characterisation, recycled jokes, Brian Blessed-style bellowing, and self-conscious smugness. The result is one of the most tiresome episodes since the revival, too tiresome for me to review it properly.

Recycled jokes include, among others...

The companion trying to talk to strangers in their own accent, and the Doctor telling her, "No, don't do that."

The Doctor and Donna making a big deal about not being married.

The Doctor and companion feed plot ideas to a future titan of literature.

The Doctor being poisoned in some way and having to 'expel' the carcinogens by behaving like a buffoon.

On the issue of buffoonery, David Tennant puts on probably his most awful display of over-the-top yelling yet, a truly vacuous performance, and very much in keeping with the general 'Mel Brooks' attitude of the episode i.e. the way to be funny and exciting is to have people shouting at the top of their lungs a lot. (This attitude also probably sums up why Catherine Tate is in the series at all; her performance was hideous yet again, but even she was overshadowed by Tennant.)

The idea of knowingly having an affair with a gigantic alien insect is utterly ridiculous, and the explanation for it - "It just didn't matter to me" - is the laziest bit of non-characterisation I've ever seen in Dr Who, an even worse sidestep round a moral/psychological issue than Ursula claiming that it was all right being imprisoned in a paving slab because it's a "peaceful feeling". It's a peaceful feeling being a slab of concrete because the writer says it's a peaceful feeling. And sleeping with a bug didn't matter to her Ladyship because the writer says it didn't matter to her.

Every time the story shows any sign of progressing sensibly or in an engaging way, it seems to lose heart and go for a lazy laugh instead. But it also shows little faith in that either, and so the attempts at laughs usually degenerate into a spell of shouting. It makes for a tedious, puerile experience, one that insults the intelligence of the viewer.

I will speak up for the portrayal of the wasp, which is probably the best CGI the series has ever produced, but that's never going to be enough to carry the episode, especially as it only appears for about three minutes of airtime. Still it's a redeeming feature.

Other than that, the episode is a terrible waste of a good concept and an excellent guest cast. It's certainly the most feeble episode of the season so far, and indeed, it's one of the worst episodes I've ever seen, on the same dismal level as Last Of The Time Lords (albeit for different reasons). I can't really be bothered analysing it in any more detail than this.

2/10. Please, Steven Moffat, come and rescue us!

[Storm]

Silence In The Library.

Ah, gawd bless Steven Moffat, eh? After the travesty of The Unicorn And The Wasp, I cried out for him to come and rescue us, and sure enough he rides into town in his steel armour and fights off the demons of cr*ppy scriptwriting that have had us under siege and battling for our lives for almost the entire season. Quite simply, he does wee-wees from the top of the Eiffel Tower over almost all the other writers on New [Who[/i].

To be honest, even Moffat's not at his absolute best here. as I found the early stages of the story a little self-conscious and meandering - similar to RTD's tiresome obsession with the year Five Billion AD, Steven Moffat seems to have developed a bizarre fixation on the Fifty-First Century - while the crew of archaeologists, Alex Kingston apart, came across as very shallow. Miss Evangelista was a Mary-Sue, the stereotype nice-but-ineffectual wimp that everyone else looks down on and patronises, and then predictably dies first to make the others feel guilty about it later. (They don't think you're stupid because you're pretty, luv, they think you're stupid because you are.) In Lux, we have another stereotype, dating back to long before even Tomb Of The Cybermen; the pompous, officious, fanatical, but cowardly expedition leader. Meanwhile, Anita and the two Daves are just cyphers. Therefore, only Professor River Song comes across as having any real depth. And seeing she shows signs of being just another love-struck companion, even that depth is a bit too familiar to hold the audience's interest beyond the mystery of how she knows the Doctor to begin with.

The Professor is also symptom of another fixation in Moffat's writing that is manifesting itself a little too frequently for comfort, which is his 'time-wimey', events-out-of-sequence gibberish. He seems to like having people meeting old friends and family out of time, or having events in the future causing themselves by their effects travelling into the past e.g. the Tenth Doctor being able to solve the implosion effect by remembering being the Fifth Doctor seeing the Tenth Doctor solving it. With Professor Song remembering an entire relationship that hasn't even started yet, Moffat is wearing out the time-paradox concept very quickly.

I should stress that I'm absolutely delighted by the news that Russell T. "Grand-Master-of-self-congratulation-and-lazy-plotting" Davies is leaving the series, and that Moffat will be taking over the role of Producer. He has a far wider variety of ideas than RTD, far more imagination, far less interest in cheap humour or overcooked melodrama, and I suspect he will also be infinitely more daring and willing to break formula. But one thing he is not madly better at is characterisation. In each episode he writes, he comes up with one interesting guest character - always female e.g Madame du Pompadour, Sally Sparrow - but the rest of them tend to be characters by short-hand. So while his succession should be very much for the better, I'm not counting on it yet.

But in most respects this episode is fresh water in the desert at exactly the time we most needed some. The only real break from formula that we've had all season - no alien invasion fleets, no unsubtle diatribes against the evil of Corporations, no guest authors from classic English literature, no infiltration-by-marketing of a sinister alien product - it probably has more new and fresh ideas in it than we've seen since Moffat's last script, Blink. A library planet. A world that interfaces with the past through a human mind. Statues with faces made of flesh. Shadows that eat human flesh.

What Moffat is far better at than any other writer on the series is taking something normal and down-to-Earth (as RTD insists they all stick to because of his patronising fear that the audience won't relate to anything that can't be slotted into Eastenders) and managing to make it scary and different. Indeed, Moffat appears to be the only writer who recognises that, even if you have to stick to normal, mundane elements you can still let your imagination run wild, instead of assuming that it means you have to do more-of-the-same every week.

So, in the same way that. last year, Blink had the audience jumping in paranoia for weeks afterwards every time they walked past a statue in the park, so Silence In The Library will have people literally jumping at shadows for a long time to come. Shadows are as mundane, harmless and every day as statues, but with Moffat holding the pen, they become insidious, feral, and sinister carnivores. And by their very nature, you can't tell which shadows are the carnivores and which are just shadows, adding to the sense of terror.

Moffat's ability to keep the audience guessing is heightened by his knack for surrealism, and multi-layered reality. Seeing that RTD's production rules restrict the series from having alien environments, Moffat compensates by giving us multiple environments - both of them fairly mundane in this case i.e. a library and someone's living room - and makes them seem disturbing and alien by creating a metaphysical relationship between them.

He pulls off other clever storytelling tricks of a type reminiscent of classic Dr Who of the 1970's, a rare example of subtext surviving in the modern era. The Doctor and the Professor both make use of the term 'spoilers' to describe books from the future. This is accurate in itself, as there is always the old moral that people should not know too much about their own future, but it is also a very amusing self-referential joke, and I suspect it may even be a dig at the current Producer. One of the many, many annoyances of RTD's time in charge has been his frequent inability to keep his mouth shut about what will be happening in the stories to come; we found out that the Master would be returning at the end of season 3 before season 2 was shown. So having the Doctor and the Professor insist that you shouldn't know what is to come is perhaps Moffat's way of promising that when he is in charge, he will put a stop to the plot-leaks.

The episode retreads aspects of Moffat's past work on the series. From The Empty Child, we are greeted with a spine-chilling cliffhanger with a zombie-like figure repeating a phrase that appears totally redundant over-and-over (in The Empty Child it was "Are you my mummy?" here it's "Hey, who turned out the lights?"). From The Girl In The Fireplace, the child with the large, Mattie-Storrin-like eyes is reminiscent of the young Madame de Pompadour. The Vashta Nerada, as already mentioned, bear some similarity to the statues in Blink, which is also referenced by the Doctor talking to someone through a television screen.

But the good thing is, while the items have an element of derivation, they are not merely recycled from what was there before, and further, the plot doesn't hinge on them. It therefore keeps the story from being just formulaic, predictable or a lazy re-tread of the past.

The talking statues with the face of dead humans are also a clever idea, and intelligently highlights the way taboos change. If you think about it, such statues are actually a splendid tribute to the departed, but it sounds really leery to us because we see what appear to be dead people talking.

The dead talking is in fact a chilling theme running through the story, with books allowing the words of authors from the distant past to reach the people of the Fifty-First Century, and the neural relays allowing an echo of the dying members of the expedition to live on briefly as ghosts. (The Professor even refers to the phenomenon as 'ghosting'.) And when one of the Daves starts ghost-walking, don't his movements look like those of an Auton? Just an observation. But the interesting thing is, I have a suspicion that what is happening in the library has even more to do with living after death. See below.

Given what a cliche character Evangelista was, the prolonged death-scene with the neural-relay was surprisingly poignant. It was helped that there was plenty of feeling without too much of the emotional exposition. If RTD had written that scene we'd have had to sit through loads of loud crying, with the rest of the crew grailing at themselves - "Oh GOD, I FEEL SOOOOOOO GUILTY FOR TEASING HER, YOU KNOW! I WAS GUILTY OF BEING MEAN TO HER AND MAKING HER THINK SHE WAS STUPID! I HATE FEELING LIKE THIS, I FEEL GUILTY!! DON'T YOU FEEL GUILTY TOO? I MEAN I DO, I FEEL SO GUILTY" etc. We'd also probably have to endure five minutes of the Doctor ranting on about revenge and how nothing will stop him achieving it.

Instead, we simply hear Donna murmuring what a horrible thing she just saw, and the Professor, in an impressively understated way, admitting she'd "like a word" with whoever killed Evangelista. The rest is left to the performers' facial acting - DT's brooding look was particularly well applied here - and to the audience to figure some of it out for themselves. This is good; at least one writer on the series recognises that there's no need to patronise us.

The guest cast is a cut or two above the usual standard this season. Alex Kingston shows her usual class for playing a knowing female, the kid playing the girl is very good, and the rest of the expedition actors do well with what little they are given. The exception is Colin Salmon as the mysterious psychiatrist, Doctor Moon. He was bloody awful as Avon in the Blake's 7 radio series last year (bring back Paul Darrow, for heaven's sake!), and although he's better here, he still had me thinking he sheds leaves every Autumn. I also have to give credit to the two regulars. David Tennant gives his best display in a long time, and Catherine Tate gives her best display full stop, aside from her too-many-head-bobs delivery of, "Are you talkin' rubbish? Do you know him or don't you?"Just one step away from there to, "Am I bovvered?" Ouch.

My suspicion is that the child will grow up to become the Professor; she refers to the Doctor as 'sweetie', which is the term of endearment favoured by the child's father. What relationship the child has with the library is being kept unclear at this stage; this is good, as it will make sure there is more mystery to unfold in the second half, leaving less room for the usual problem of part two descending into another runaround. The appearance is that the TARDIS has somehow materialised inside the girl's subconscious, but I don't think it's that. And Donna probably hasn't died, at least not completely.

Even when hundreds of thousands are shown to have died, they are said to have been saved. Perhaps this is in a computerised sense, as in their personalities have been stored as data tracks; the Doctor did say that the planet's core was the largest hard drive ever constructed after all. The girl's brain appears to be some kind of interface able to control it. How, we don't know, but the girl must have saved Donna's personality in some way.

Still, it's not all bad news. (Note; this is a joke. Please laugh now.)

A few other things I noticed;-

"Maybe they're really, really quiet." Well you two won't fit in very well, will you?

One million million life-forms on the planet? Well, maybe the scanner was set to ignore single-cell organisms and the like (not that the Doctor gave any indication of that), but er... they could just be germs, you know.

The TARDIS diary is a lovely parody of the Doctor's old 500-year diary. Oh, and some of the direction and camerawork were very cheesy. Please get rid of those stupid, tilting camera angles! It's like watching a 60's episode of Batman.

The Doctor shows more of his innate hypocrisy; telling Donna not to read things about her future, and then trying to read the Professor's diary.

Anyway, bottom line. For about the only time in about a year, the series has managed to drag itself completely away from formula and silly gimmickry. And best of all... I didn't notice any "We're not married!" gags!!! Wooooot!! I almost gave it a bonus point just for that.

8/10. Please, please let's have a two-parter that works all the way through!

[Storm]

Forest Of The Dead.

It still wasn't Moffat at his best, but I would say this was a rare two-parter in that it did work all the way through, more or less. There were patches of unhealthy melodrama that were not really needed - another of those bad habits the new series has that I'm getting royally fed up of is the Doctor apologising to dead bodies - the mystery wasn't very difficult for the audience to solve (see what I said about the 'Saved' clue in my review of Silence In The Library), there were a couple of minor contrivances, and some of the logic at the end was seriously open to question. But most of it was forgiveable, and there was so much chilling and intelligent material along the way that most of the question marks do feel a little like churlish nit-picking anyway.

Mind you, one gripe I will make no bones about it the resolution of the cliffhanger from part one. It went like this;-

River knocks hole in the wall. Everyone walks through the hole in the wall. Problem solved.

Sorry, but by any measure that is a really lame cop-out. If RTD had resorted to that in one of his two-parters I'd be tearing his guts out with a red-hot blade for it, and rightly so, so I have to do the same to Steven Moffat here as well. For Pete's sake, man, you get paid thousands for each script you write, bloody work harder!!! It reminds me of a Red Dwarf episode where Lister outlines a hugely intricate, combative and detailed escape plan, and when he finishes speaking, Kryten adds, "Or we could just use the teleporter." That was a comedy, this is supposed to be an adventure drama. BUCK UP, MOFFAT, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE NEW PRODUCER-IN-WAITING!!!

Another escape-bit that grated was the one with the trapdoor. There are so many reasons why that bit made no sense that I can't even be bothered listing them. But I will make the point that there was no reason in the world why the trapdoor would even be there.

I must confess I did come out of this really liking River, who seemed a far more interesting and likeable companion than Donna could ever be. Having said that, Donna was easily at her most sympathetic here, and for once Catherine Tate's performance was a real benefit. Her patronising moment when she said, "Try a vowel!" was the only bit that jarred, and some of her moments of innocent bewilderment in cyberspace were very well played indeed. Whenever she puts aside the chavvy shouting mode, she shows that she does have some acting ability hidden away in there after all.

It also helped her performance that she had a role to play here that wasn't just a) to give the Doctor someone to explain the plot to for the benefit of the viewers, b) to make a huge deal about not being married to the Doctor, or c) talking about how much she learned spending three months temping as a filing clerk at a bureau in Brixton. Instead, Donna's pseudo-story gave us some real drama in its own right while, again, resisting the temptation to spill over into teeth-on-edge melodrama. Her histrionics when the children disappeared were powerful but didn't seem at all unnatural or forced for a change. Her screams of, "I'll find yooooouuuuuu!!!!" were perhaps over-the-top but not actually objectionable.

The episode certainly lacked nothing for a sense of humour, but it also wasn't zany, and that I think is why the series should improve markedly once RTD is gone from the script editor role. Apparently, Moffat has a clause in his writing contract that no amendments RTD makes to his scripts are allowed without Moffat's own approval. It really shows, as the inanity of so many other episodes is thankfully gone here. RTD clearly loves crowbarring jarring and inappropriate gags into other people's work - guest writers from the series have complained about him doing this - but as he couldn't do it here, there aren't any. Even Donna's line about being on a diet doesn't get in the way.

So much of the imagery and so many of the ideas here were really disturbing. A world populated over and over by the same two kids. Evangelista's distorted beauty. Even the walking skeletons, ancient horror cliche that they may be, seemed really terrifying in the context. The way that time in cyberspace would just rush by in a blink, and the way memories would just be fitted into Donna's head whenever they were required to maintain the illusion, really make you wonder about your own perception of reality. A recent news article reported that metaphysicians calculate a twenty per cent probability that the world we supposedly live in may not be real at all but is in fact a matrix; the reason the possibility is so high is that, if the matrix blocked our memories of the world we entered the matrix from, we would have no way of knowing for sure. Is the world real? We're sure it is, but then Donna seemed pretty sure that the world of cyberspace is real.

If there were a major failing in Forest, it's that many of the twists were a bit predictable, but it seemed to take the Doctor an eternity to catch up. As I mentioned earlier, I'd more or less figured out what had happened to the library's population mid-way through the first episode. Equally, once the Doctor had tinted her visor, you could tell that Anita would soon die without us seeing it. Also, Dave's death was obvious as soon as his "Let's go... Doctor!" line was repeated, but it took nearly a minute for the Doctor to twig. Stupid point! Indeed, the Doctor is scoring an abnormally high number of stupid points this season, and he gets another here for taking so long to remember the eternal relationship between forests and libraries. I imagine half the country was yelling at the TV screens, "Books are made of paper, and paper's made of wood, you cretin!!!"

The ending was perhaps where the story really started to get carried away with itself, to its detriment. There are two problems I have with it.

First there are logic questions. Now I must stress, with glowing approval, that the solution was not a lazy bit of technobabble or deus ex machina; please pay attention, Russell T Davies. It made sense physically and scientifically (although not so much intelligibly as, not for the first time this season, it would have been nice if David Tennant had delivered the explanation a little more slowly so that the viewers didn't have to keep replaying it to understand what he was blathering about). Any computer whose memory and data space are overloaded with open programs starts to malfunction, and will need more memory to give it extra 'workspace' as it were. The problem is that I cannot believe that the extra space provided by a single humanoid mind, even the mind of a Time Lord, was going to make any worthwhile difference. All right, it took some of the strain off CAL, the other human mind in the equation, but if she had a planetary computer to back her up to begin with, the same question still has to be asked; if a hard drive the size of a planet was inadequate, what difference would be made by the extra space provided by one human brain?

Another logic question is why the future Doctor needed to fit a neural relay in the sonic screwdriver in order to rescue River. She already had a relay in her suit. Besides, couldn't she just have copied her personality into the hard drive directly while she was hooked up to it? If CAL was able to do that for Evangelista and the others - who weren't even hooked up to the hard drive, remember - then why not River? The rescue scene with the relay came across as an excuse for some last minute acrobatics with the lift and whatnot, which were undeniably spectacular.

Secondly, the ending felt like a retread of the end of The Doctor Dances. At one point River even mentioned that everybody lives, which was a direct quote of the Ninth Doctor's words. Recycling material is a ghastly habit the revived series has slumped into, and it is outrageously smug, to say nothing of being tedious to listen to. Please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase, BBC Wales, pack it in!

All in all, it's flawed, and the two-parter doesn't show Moffat at the top of his game. But even so, it's chilling, atmospheric, imaginative and disturbing, and it beats every other episode in the series, most of them by a margin so huge it's absolutely embarrassing.

Individually, this episode scrapes an 8/10, as does the two-parter as a whole.

[Storm]

Midnight.

Look, I really want to be kind to Russell T. Davies, okay? I do, really. I mean, at least he tried for once, he tried to come up with an idea, and to do something a little different. For sure, this is not a typical episode from his lazy pen. Instead, it's an attempt at a real drama, an attempt at being psychological rather than melodramatic, and at being scary rather than just silly. And after a typically tiresome opening with lots of the usual stale set-piece jokes about family arguments, something resembling a real story and a proper mystery did show signs of emerging. It was also most unusual to see RTD actually writing a story that isn't set in the world of EastEnders. So I do give him credit for deciding not to follow formula, and I do thank him for at least listening to the fans for once. But there's a problem, and it's a big problem.

Midnight is a bit crummy.

It's not far, I must stress, from getting it right. And I will acknowledge that it is a superior script to anything RTD has produced probably since Smith And Jones. But there are crucial elements that never make it into the story, and there are also still some of his usual failings insinuating their way in from the outset.

For a start, the first fifteen minutes are so tiresome it defies belief. The characters are all established as the usual collection of by-the-numbers caricatures and stereotypes. We have an amiable-but-narrow-minded ageing professor with a meek-but-promising assistant whom he talks down to. Remind me, didn't we meet those two at the end of time last year? Or are we supposed to see a real distinction from Professor Yana and Chantho?

We also have a bickering family made up of a macho father figure, a nagging, irritable mother figure, and a messy teenage boy. Martha's family resurfacing with a de-pigmentation problem, clearly.

And of course there's a mysterious, knowing spinster figure. How many billions of them have their been in fiction?

Having established the Warner Bros cartoon character line-up, well, we can't have an RTD episode that doesn't give us a load of wildly overstated. pointless and irrelevant satire of something in modern society. Why in the world does he feel that entertainments on an aircraft required satirising? I suppose it's a fair point that it would be nicer if strangers on public transport tried talking to each other more often, but to be honest, it's not something that actually bothers me. I use trains and trams all the time, and I have no problem whatever with putting the earphones in and listening to music, instead of pestering others who clearly just want to read their newspapers anyway.

The mystery takes a while to get itself started, and at first it's even more tiresome than the characters or the satire. Possession by an invisible alien is a sci-fi cliche so ancient and so stale that it must have been used in about a hundred movies in the 1950's. And when Sky starts repeating everyone's sentences back at them, it just sounds like a toddler mimicking to annoy. And it does annoy.

It does start to get genuinely disturbing, and the episode really gets off the ground once she is in perfect synch with the others, and the tinny sound that results from it is rather chilling. And some of the fighting and scapegoating that goes on between the passengers is fairly well done, if a bit forced. The episode genuinely appears to have rescued itself at this point.

But then, and this is what takes away almost all the merits that the episode had finally built up, it breaks two of the Commandments of Storytelling. Now I'm a great opponent of formula, which is one of the reasons the first half of this season made me so angry, but there are some rules that simply have to be obeyed. The first broken Commandment is that an enemy that is established as supremely powerful must not be killed off at the drop of a hat. The second broken Commandment is that the motivation of the enemy must be explored.

Firstly, the resolution - they fell out of the door - was a crash-landing into Cop-Out City. In its favour, it's not deus ex or sorcery, and there was a real poignancy about the way the air hostess sacrificed her life for a bunch of bickering gits who didn't even bother to learn her name. But with the menace of the alien established, for her to be beaten that easily does leave you thinking, "What the hell was all that about?" It's not as bad as, say, Timelash, where the resolution itself effectively happens off-screen and so the audience is not even told how the Doctor solved it, which is a writing crime that should be punished by execution. But still, it's lame.

Secondly, there was no explanation at all for what the creature that had possessed Sky was supposed to be, or why it was attacking everyone. A base-under-siege/passengers-trapped-in-a-lift scenario like this needs an explanation. Without one, again you find yourself thinking, "What the hell was all that about?" This sort of drama just doesn't work without more insight into what the victims are dealing with.

But I must re-iterate that at least RTD tried for once, which is a huge relief in itself. I think he was trying to emulate Steven Moffat, and got it wrong. It was a gallant failure, and one that managed to recreate the tension of a Moffat script, if nothing else. In fact, maybe that makes it a partial success. The plot was almost non-existent, but then RTD couldn't carry a plot if it was strapped to his back anyway, and as he managed to get a number of other things sort of right, some of them for the first time ever, maybe we should just accept that he did as well as he could with his limitations.

Taking the story on its own merits, I can only really give it a 5/10. Given who wrote it and how atrocious he usually is in the genre, I'm tempted to raise it to a 7. I'll have to think about it.

[Storm]

Turn Left

A title that passes for a subtle, pro-socialist metaphor in NuWho. Hmm. It's about as subtle as political points ever get here, but it certainly isn't a bad episode.

First things first though, let's get the big question out of the way. What the Hades has happened to Billie Piper's teeth? She was scraping and lisping in almost every scene, and sounded like Humphrey Bogart after a quick knee in the unmentionable bits. I know she always had some prominent gnashers, but seriously, she never used to sound like that did she? In some ways it was a good thing that she did sound so odd, because it drew attention away from the fact that this was one of her stalest performances. She sounded nervous and even a little ill.

To the story itself. Well, I did like it on the whole. The characterisation wasn't cartoonish for once - "completely non-stereotypical" Eastern-European-immigrant-who-sings-songs-at-all-hours apart - and it made a nice contrast with Midnight that this time the Doctor takes a back seat. The drama is quite well done, and the resolution is intelligent and poignant rather than 'pluck-a-solution-outta-ya-bum-while-bursting-into-tears about it'. Well, intelligent so long as you don't think too hard about it anyway, but we'll come to that shortly.

Unfortunately, it's still a fair distance short of classic because it's totally unoriginal on various levels. The old surrealist plot of how the world would have turned out if one thing had happened differently or if one person had never been born - it has been done everywhere. Ronnie Corbett did it in Sorry!, I've seen it in My Family, Dallas and Casualty. God help any TV series that feels a need to draw on shows like them for plot ideas! (I'm not necessarily saying they're bad shows, just not good places for lifting ideas from.)

Further adding to the unoriginality aspect, too many of the events are re-treads of what happened in past episodes. This underlines the problem all the way through NuWho of too much happening on modern day Earth, and not nearly enough stories happening anywhere else. There's also an all-too-frequent sense of self-replication, with events from past episodes being done again for no earthly reason; Father's Day (Rose kneels by someone who is dying after being run over), and Last Of The Time Lords (re-set button as whole years are undone by a single action) are copied into this episode for no plausible reason at all. It doesn't help.

Also the idea of the universe being blotted out or being made to unravel in some way is not new either. And the science of it is so naive it's just ridiculous. It's as though Russell T. Davies simply doesn't know how far apart stars are. If this 'Darkness' is blotting out entire star systems, okay I can't make any judgements on that in itself as yet, but the light from these stars takes literally years - sometimes hundreds or even thousands of years - to reach the Earth. It'll take an eternity for most of the stars that Wilf has been watching to vanish from Earth's perspective. And yet he sees entirely galaxies hundreds of millions of light years away disappearing at the same time as stars just a few dozen light years away.

(To put the distances between stars in context; Alpha Proxima is the closest star to the Sol system, around four light years away. If the sun were, say, your sofa, and the Earth were your TV screen - we're just talking a typical living room lay-out here - then Alpha Proxima would be a sofa in southern Africa! And that's the nearest star to Sol. Even Sol and the Earth are over ninety million miles - about eight light minutes - apart.)

Also didn't like the typically-suggestive joke about the Doctor having 'some great hair'. Why not just follow it up with, 'and not just the hair on his head' and have done with it? Learn some discipline, NuWho writers!

I do like the implication that Rose, rather ruthlessly, calculated the only way to get past-Donna to turn left was to cause a traffic accident. She probably calculated that future-Donna could not argue past-Donna into doing it, so deliberately sent her to the wrong location, leaving her only one option. I pity the driver of that lorry though, and I guess it was good for him that that 'bubble' universe ended as it did, or he'd be living with guilt for the rest of his life. Certainly one of the cleverer resolutions that RTD has written so far. But as is so often the case with these things, when you stop and think about it, you soon realise it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why did Rose have to send Donna back to step into the traffic? Why involve future-Donna at all? Why does Rose not go back to the turning point and do it herself? Why not go back to a few minutes earlier and set up some kind of harmless roadblock? The way it's done seems like the most astounding form of overkill.

The scenes with the non-Britons being taken to concentration camps/death-camps were, as mentioned earlier, not exactly handled with subtlety, but in contrast to many others who saw it, I think they were convincing. A disaster on the scale that the south of England had suffered was bound to bring society under enormous pressure, and when a society is under pressure, it will quickly turn hardline and intolerant (largely because it can hardly afford not to be), and it will resort to scapegoating minorities to quell opposition.

The overall theme of the episode then is one that moving to the right is a bad move. Given the obnoxious way that British politics has been moving further to the right wing over the last quarter of a century, I guess I can sympathise with the principle. Jury's out on the execution though.

7/10. It's definitely a decent showing, and RTD's best work in a long, long while. Still not brilliant though.