Doctor Who - Doomsday

... so the Daleks emerge from the Void Ship and say they'll exterminate everyone, but then Rose talks to them and stops them by making them think that they know more than they're saying. The Daleks have a thing called a Genesis Ark with them which seems to be a big armless Dalek thing. The episode continues with constant flitting back and forth between the Doctor, Jackie and the Cybermen and Rose, Mickey and the Daleks ... all of which is nice on screen, but a total pain to try and write up, so I'm not going to try. The gist is that the Daleks want a time traveller to touch the Genesis Ark to open it. How they knew/thought there would be on Earth in this time and place is beyond me. What if the Doctor, Rose or Mickey had not been there? The Daleks' plans would have been stuffed. And the Cybermen want to convert everyone into Cybermen and somehow the CyberLeader manages to send a transmission to all televisions about this - bloomin powerful this Torchwood place to have the ability to do that. And what would the Cybermen do once everyone has been converted? Live in Cyber-happiness? Anyway, eventually a Dalek encounters two Cybermen (numbers 1065 and 1066) in a corridor. That sounds like the start of a bad joke ... they talk, they transmit pictures of each other, and then the Dalek destroys the Cybermen. I really liked the dialogue here with the cool Black Dalek referring to destroying the Cybermen as 'pest control' and claiming that the Cybermen are superior in only one way to the Daleks ... they are 'better at dying'. Nice stuff. The CyberLeader decides to convert the humans they have captured into Cybermen and so Yvonne and Jackie along with some technician types get hauled off to their doom. The Daleks spot the Doctor on the monitor screen and when Rose IDs him to them, they are scared ... however the Genesis Ark takes up their attention and they apply suckers to it, after sucking all the knowledge about the Earth from poor Rajesh's head. What a way to go. Though why having all your brainwaves drained would either kill you or turn you into a dessicated corpse is anyone's guess. Suddenly, and with a bound, the rest of the Preachers arrive - Jake and his mates from the parallel world. Yvonne goes in to be cyber-converted in a nasty scene, and Jackie is next, but Jake's mates kill the CyberLeader with the Doctor and immediately one of the Cybermen with Jackie is upgraded to Leader status - I liked this idea that if you kill their leaders, another automatically steps in. The distracted Cybermen allow Jackie to escape, and she heads down the fire escape. Conveniently, Jake and co have their own version of Torchwood and have developed travel disks to help them move between dimensions. Very useful indeed. Back there, the Doctor meets Pete Tyler again. This is turning into happy families! All we're missing is Sarah Jane and K9 to come barrelling in and the party would be complete. Things are running along quite nicely now, and returning to 'our' earth, the Doctor brokers a deal with the Cybermen to attack the Daleks. He wanders into the Sphere room (which was sealed before - wonder how they managed to open it) and talks with the Daleks who all are revealed to have names - Thane, Sek, Jast and Karn (spellings uncertain) - and are a special secret Cult of Skaro, Daleks above and beyond the Emperor and who can think how the enemy thinks ... what? All sounds a little convenient to me. And they have this Genesis Ark thing, which is a Time Lord device, activated by touch. Of course no-one would be daft enough to touch it ... would they? Of course not. Except Mickey, naturally, who falls against it during the ensuing battle between Daleks, Cybermen and troops. Silly boy. So the Cybermen are destroyed by the Daleks, the humans retreat and the Genesis Ark is primed. The Daleks head off for more space - 30 square miles seem to be required - and so the Ark and the black Dalek fly into the sky. Meanwhile, Pete and Jackie meet and the action slows to a crawl as they talk and then hug. Sheesh. The Doctor has an idea now though, and reveals that by looking at everyone through 3D glasses he can see 'void stuff' on everything that has crossed through the void. I though the void contained nothing at all ... so what is void stuff? Anyway ... if the Doctor reopens the void breach then everything covered in void stuff will be dragged in. But that would include himself so he appropriates the clamp things we saw in part 1 to hold on to. But Rose wants to stay with him ... cue some more sentimental stuff as she argues with the Doctor and then with Jackie before Pete takes them all back to Alternate Earth and then Rose comes back on her own - there's no stopping this girl. Meanwhile the black Dalek has opened the Genesis Ark and it's not the complete backlist of Phil Collins' band, nor is it Davros ... it's a TARDIS-like thing full of Daleks which all emerge and start attacking the Cybermen. We're now into endgame ... Rose and the Doctor start sorting out the levers and clamps. The Cybermen are converging on them, but are stopped by Cyber-Yvonne who kills them. Seems her conversion was not successful for some reason and she still retains her human voice and can cry oil! This was most rubbish and perhaps the weakest part of the story. So the breach is opened and the Daleks are all dragged into it. Despite being told that the Cybermen were too, we don't see a single one go into the breach. And the black Dalek does an emergency temporal shift (as you do) and vanishes. So he's still around somewhere then. All danger and excitement now, and as we're expecting Rose to die, it's no real surprise when her lever starts to fall back and she has to grab it and push it home again ... but she's lost her hold and is being dragged into the breach and the void ... when Pete conveniently appears at exactly the right time, and standing in exactly the right spot to catch her and take her safely back to his universe. Just in time too as the breach sucks itself in and is gone. Questions here: how did he know to come back? Where to stand? And when? All a little to convenient really. The next scenes are brilliant. The Doctor and Rose. Tears. Each separated from the other forever. I cried. The acting here is the best we have seen from Piper and Tennant. And then we fade to black. But it's not all over. There's a neat coda where Rose dreams the Doctor and she, Pete, Jackie and Mickey travel to Norway to a deserted beach at a place called Bad Wolf Bay. There the Doctor appears for one final time to Rose and they get to say their goodbyes. Rose tells him she loves him, and he appears to do the same, but vanishes words unspoken. The next shot of the Doctor in the TARDIS, tears streaming down his face is the best of all - unspoken emotion and the fact that he has lost his best friend in all the universe (again). But things are afoot. There is suddenly a bride in full bridal gear in the TARDIS console room. She turns and it's Catherine Tate - a somewhat unfunny comedienne whose only decent catchphrase/character is the 'Am I bovvered?' schoolgirl. What!!!!!!! So overall I really enjoyed Doomsday. It was a fitting ending, and although I wanted Rose to die - and come to think of it, something of a wasted opportunity to do some false deaths for her (like the disintegration by the Anne Droid last year) - this was most suitable. The battles between Daleks and Cybermen seemed somewhat one-sided though - shame the Cybermen didn't have some weapon to use against the Daleks - but were a mixture of spectacle and mundaninity. And the story as a whole hung together mostly, with a few hasty elements thrown in. So what's next? Torchwood the series? Set in the Pete Tyler Universe, starring Billie Piper as Rose Tyler (well she said she was working for them)? Stranger things have been known to happen.

Doctor Who - Army of Ghosts

After a couple of weeks of episodes which were perhaps a little ho hum, Army of Ghosts upped the anti significantly and presented an episode which is perhaps the best to date in the series. I adored the opening pre-title sequence, with Rose narrating and the visuals. The planet with the rocks and flying things was awesome, and then to end with the statement: 'This is the story of how I died' was a very brave move indeed I felt. Of course, this is assuming that Rose means 'died' in the way that perhaps many viewers will take it (more on this later). So the Doctor and Rose return 'home' to see Jackie who snogs the Doctor (great reaction from Tennant to that as well) and then tells them that Grandad Prentis is coming - but he died 10 years ago! Seems there are ghosts appearing all over the world (side step: how can Jackie's TV get all those foreign channels?) for short periods of time, and people feel these are the shades of loved ones. However of course the Doctor is suspicious and so sets out to find out what these things really are. In a lovely moment he 'Ghostbusters' himself up with a TARDIS-themed bit of kit and traces the origin of one of the Ghosts. However, we the viewers know already that they're being controlled from Torchwood, a scientific/military place apparently run by Yvonne Hartmann who has scary teeth and even scarier cleavage. Aside from the ghosts, there's also a large mystery-sphere hanging in another room which seems to not exist. Office romance is blossoming between the cute Adele Oshoodi and Gareth Evans, but when they nip away for a snog, they are captured by Cybermen! Not really what they were expecting, and how on earth did a group of Cybermen set up a secret base in building works in Torchwood Tower in the first place! I'm not impressed with their security arrangements to be honest. These sequences are, however, magnificently directed and the music is awesome. Finally Murray Gold is being held in check. Less is definately more. While the Doctor is messing about trying to track the Ghosts, Jackie and Rose have a chat. Now this might be me, and I may be reading too much into it, but the gist seemed to be that Rose was no longer the Rose that Jackie knew, and that in the future, the person calling herself 'Rose' would be a totally different person, older and not even human any more. Now this could be Russell signalling that 'the story of how I died' is actually of Rose dying as 'Rose' and becoming someone else ... or it could be that she really is going to die ... we shall see next week. Anyway, the Doctor's fiddling alerts Torchwood and they see the TARDIS dematerialise on CCTV footage. The Doctor, having traced the signal, arrives at Torchwood only to be captured by the grinning Yvonne and her clappy happy soldiers. The Doctor drags Jackie from the TARDIS and introduces her as Rose (another instance/clue that Rose isn't Rose any more perhaps?) and they go off on a guided tour of Torchwood Tower in London's Docklands. As a side issue here, where is UNIT? No-one mentions them and yet they were investigating and fighting alien menaces for years before - they even appeared in The Christmas Invasion and yet here there's another organisation apparently doing the same thing that they did. Meanwhile Adele is back seeming a little blank, and she takes another co-worker, Matt, off for snogging. He is maybe expecting some action from Adele, but instead he gets to meet the Cybermen and their cutting machines (seriously ... no-one noticed all this happening in the building works?). So Rose leaves the TARDIS when it has been left in storage and, donning a fetching lab coat, heads off to explore. Of course she finds the Sphere Room where she is promptly captured. However one of the workers there - Samuel - looks familiar. It's Mickey! To be honest, I was actually really pleased to see him, and it raised a smile. We now start to head towards the episode ending. Adele, Matt and Gareth are all Cyber-controlled and start up another Ghost Shift, despite Yvonne ordering it cancelled. The Doctor realises what's happening and tries to find the transmitter controlling them - it's in the building area, and before you can blink, everyone is captured by Cybermen who have cool new guns in their arms. There's also a CyberLeader (with black 'ear' handles) and he orders Ghost Shift to 100%. It seems that all the ghosts are actually Cybermen who are taking over the Earth, coming through the dimensional instability caused by the Sphere's arrival. At the same time, the Sphere activates and starts to gain mass and reality - Rose, Mickey and the technician Rajesh Singh, watch as it starts to open ... but what's in the Sphere? The CyberLeader admits to our horror that the Sphere is nothing to do with the Cybermen, they just followed it ... And then ... And then ... Oh my giddy aunt! The Sphere opens and it's only a bunch of bloomin Daleks that emerge, flying down. Gold ones and a really cool new black one ... and it's 'EXTERMINATE!!!' and crash into the closing credits. Awesome. I was so, so impressed by this episode. Wonderful direction, faultless acting (with the exception perhaps of Adele as she was trying to figure out where Gareth had gone), great lighting, good ideas, brilliant use of music, and the coolest monsters. All in all next week will have to go some to top this. But. But I hope. I so hope. Please Russell ... no deux ex machina - no Rose looking into the heart of the TARDIS again and destroying everyone with a blink - no Doctor pulling some gizmo from his pocket which solves everything - no cop out. For once we seem to have a plot, a real plot. And proper characters. I want to cry next week. I want Rose to go in a blaze of glory. I want Cybermen and Daleks. I want adventure and excitement. Explosions and danger. 6 Days is too long to wait.

Doctor Who - Fear Her

What a great title! Shame it doesn't really have much to do with the episode. I can see why people might 'fear' Chloe, but it's not really the overall theme of the piece, which is more to do with being alone than anything else. Overall the episode is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is very nicely done, and the sheer normality of the situation works in its favour. On the other hand there seem to be a lot of missed opportunities here, and an almost palpable sense of holding back. The only CGI work that was obvious here was the animation of Chloe's picture at the start, the little alien flower thing going into Chloe and coming out again, the space pod leaving earth, the attack by the scribble monster and the glowing eyes on the painting in the closet. But then maybe the effects are being used far more subtly in this episode. Perhaps the crowds in the Olympic stadium were all CGI ... maybe the torch flame was ... my point is that these are not apparent to the viewer, and if they are not noticable then they have done a stupendous job. But the sense of things missing is very strong ... more on this later. Fear Her is the story of Chloe Webber, a lonely child who finds a friend in an alien life form. This creature can command energies to trap people, animals and objects in drawings which then are somehow alive and moving and keeping the alien company. I'm really not sure how having a bunch of very annoyed kids on hand stops the alien from feeling lonely - which is the whole point - but maybe we have to skim over that. The Doctor and Rose arrive, looking forward to attending the Olympics - it is 2012 - but get sidetracked into the mystery of the disappearing children. The residents of Dame Kelly Holmes Close in East London seem frightened and concerned, but it takes the Doctor to sense ionic power in the air. Some detective work later, and the Doctor traces the source to Chloe. Her mum, Trish (a fine performance from Nina Sosanya, another actor I recognised from Urban Gothic: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/davidjhowe00/e_s01_e05.htm), is scared of her and has seen the pictures in her room moving. So the Doctor puts Chloe to sleep and talks to the alien inside her. The scenes here are very eerie with little Chloe's whispered responses as the being Isolus talks to the Doctor, a perfect way to create the tension. What I was less impressed with was the Doctor then knowing everything that there was to know about the alien and its origins. Now I know this has been done before in too many stories, but it always feels a bit of a cop out - it would have been nice if the Doctor perhaps couldn't remember or was vague or something. But all the tension goes because we now know what we're up against. Isolus is lonely and loves Chloe and doesn't want to leave her - even though the Doctor is offering to help. And so the evil wardrobe painting of Chloe's dad comes alive and starts huffing and puffing as Chloe becomes agitated. Trish sings to her and this calms the situation down. These are all nice ideas, but start to become confused. Is it Chloe who is wielding the power or Isolus? Who wants to release the monster? So the Doctor and Rose head off to find Isolus' space pod, but Chloe follows, sees the TARDIS and draws another picture, trapping the Doctor. Rose is on her own, and in some great scenes she deduces where the pod is - drawn to the heat of hot tarmac used to mend the road by Kel (a nice Micky-substitute for Rose) - and grabs a pick axe from Kel's van to unearth the alien pod, which is no bigger than a thumb. But meanwhile Isolus/Chloe decides she needs more companions and so Chloe draws the Olympic crowds, snatching them all into the world of paper. The TV commentator (Huw Edwards) seems most perturbed at this - every man woman and child instantly vanishing from the stadium - but not enough it seems to halt the progression of the torch as this carries on as normal. The cartoon Doctor prompts Rose to the Olympic Torch as a symbol of love, she races to it, throws the space pod in the air, where it has just enough power to get to the torch. Isolus now realises she can escape and so bids farewell to Chloe and leaves. All the picture people are returned at this moment as well, including everyone in the stadium. What? Did I blink and miss something? A moment ago, Isolus wouldn't leave Chloe as she loved her and she was drawing a picture of the whole world to get enough people to keep her company ... now just because her pod is being charged, she leaves without a moment's hesitation, throwing away a week's work. Hmmm. I feel the 45 minute time limit might have something to do with this. Anyway, all seems well. Except that as the drawings are coming back to life, so will the one in the wardrobe and Trish and Chloe are menaced by an unseen cartoon man until they sing together and return everything to normal (it was Chloe's fear that was powering it). These scenes were tremendous in that we didn't see the horror of Chloe's nightmare vision of a father coming to get her - far better this way. But I really felt more could have been made of this whole element. As I mentioned at the start, the effects seemed very lite this week, and I wanted to see more like the attack by the scribble monster. I'd have loved to have seen some sort of a riff on the classic 'Take on Me' video by AhHa all those years ago, and have seen the Doctor in cartoon land, trying to calm and help cartoon kids cope - sort of Seseme Street on acid. Maybe even some cartoon monsters. But then again I mentioned the book Marianne Dreams last time, which was filmed as Paper House and was on television in the sixties as Escape Into Night (a series that I vividly remember watching). The basic idea of the book is that a child escapes into a fantasy world of drawings, but whatever she draws comes true - sinister megalith-like rocks surround her isolated cottage and move ever closer each night. The series and film were very effective indeed, and perhaps if this episode had gone down that path, then it would have been cited as unoriginal. I still feel that an opportunity was lost to make this episode the one everyone talked about - the one with the cartoon Doctor - rather than ending up as just sort of run of the mill. Anyway, the Olympic runner falls. Anyone know why? His name was Danny Fairweather and he falls over for some reason, but the Doctor is there to pick up the torch and to carry it on to light the Olympic fame, finally giving Isolus enough power to escape Earth and to head back to its brothers and sisters in space. Nice moments, and something which I feel the younger viewers appreciated. So all the kids returned, the Doctor and Rose head for the Olympics ... but ... the Doctor is uneasy. He can sense a storm approaching ... And that's about it. Not a bad episode, but not spectacular either. I liked it more than Love & Monsters but less than most of the others this year. I so hope that the next two weeks bring something special. My initial feeling however is that the inclusion of an EastEnders actress in what seems to be a key role might just be a mistake ...

Doctor Who - Love & Monsters

It is so tempting to do this review/blog in the style of someone from the show, but I'm resisting. I'm also really not sure whether Love & Monsters is either the best thing or the worst thing that Doctor Who has presented. I feel that perhaps it sits in the middle really, as deeply average. Trying so hard to do something new and yet failing on almost every count. What is telling, is that my notes on this episode cover just 4 sides of a secretary's notebook. The Satan Pit for example had 7 sides. I suspect the reason is that this episode has very little plot to speak of, and the absence of plot is made up for with 'comedy' scenes. So we kick off with our hero Elton. Not Elton John (I quite liked the clip of the singer in there though) but another Elton, and as he was the lead, he had to be well played. Marc Warren made a good attempt at this but at times came over as someone from one of the miriad 'teen' shows - many created and directed by Daniel Peacock - which is what this episode most resembled, even down to the group creating a 'band' (most of the Peacock shows feature a group of kids who are in a band and seem to be sub-SClub attempts to fuse teen entertainment with reality TV and pop). So Elton is telling us his story, how he first saw the Doctor in the middle of the night, standing in his front room when he was 3 or 4. We get flashbacks to him when the Nestene Consciousness attacked (2 years ago); when the Slitheen ship crashed in the Thames (12 months later); and when the Sycorax ship appeared over London. My family immediately decided that this was a cheap clips episode that all series seem to do at one point or another - usually without the main cast. And I have to say that I can see the similarities. Anyway, Elton meets up with Ursula having found her blog online about the Doctor, and through her meets Mr Skinner, Bridget and a girl called Bliss. They form a group called LINDA (London Investigation 'n Detective Agency) and start straying from the path of tracking down the Doctor by becoming friends, that is until the mysterious Mr Victor Kennedy arrives. Kennedy puts them back on the track of the Doctor - and this is where the opening sequence of the Doctor and Rose fighting an alien fits in. It's apparently called the Hoix and comes over like a Scooby Do sequence crossed with the Chuckle Brothers with the old 'running across the screen from different doors' gag, and Rose chucking blue or red buckets of liquid over the hapless alien. Very daft. But now the pace slows to a total crawl as Elton meets Jackie and she tries to seduce him. While amusing initially (only the scene in the Laundrette), this was way off beam for the timeslot and the audience and by 27 minutes into the show I was bored. When was something going to happen? Nothing had developed so far and all the talk and flirting and stuff ... sheesh. But then Elton and Ursula confront Kennedy who reveals himself as a green alien which has absorbed their friends. Quick as you like, Ursula is absorbed as well, and the talking faces on the creature's body was very unsettling, as was the revelation that the process was irreversible. Nasty. Especially for poor Bliss who seems to be on the creature's buttock. But now I was starting to see and hear Mike Myer's grotesque creation Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies. Especially the line that Ursula tasted of chicken ... So Elton runs, Fat Bastard chases, and we're back in Chuckle Brothers territory with a race through the streets. Until Elton gives up ... the Doctor of course now arrives, but only because Rose wants to give Elton a piece of her mind for harassing her mum! The creature (which seems to like being called an Absorbaloff though that's probably not its name) is identified by Rose as being a bit 'Slitheen' but which comes from the twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius, a place called Clom (good comedy value there), and the Doctor encourages those absorbed within to fight against the creature, Elton grabs its cane, smashes it, and it does what most aliens do at the end of an episode written by Russell T Davies, it explodes in green slime. Now we learn that the Doctor was in Elton's house all those years ago because his mother had been killed by an elemental shade which had escaped from the howling halls ... I think I'd assume that a stranger in my house, standing in a room with the corpse of my mother would be cause for intense therepy and probably repression of the memories ... I would not assume that the Doctor was some sort of friend. The sequence of young Elton and his mum on flashback cine film was nice, and the ELO's 'Mr Blue Sky' a fitting piece of music for that sequence. The show should have ended here. But it didn't. Instead we get a coda where the Doctor 'rescues' Ursula by condemming her to live forever, without aging, in a paving slab. Lovely. Does the Doctor never think about the consequences? The quip about Elton and Ursula having a bit of a love life (which I thankfully missed on the first viewing) was totally unneccessary and unwarranted - where are you when we need you Controller of BBC1? The final philosophising from Elton was also a little too much - more foreshadowing that something nasty is going to happen to Rose and Jackie and indeed everyone who touches the Doctor, even a little. So overall, an episode with high comedic value. One which seems so out of place in the series as to be unbelievable, and which takes the art of not having a plot to the extreme. I think for me, this is the season's Boom Town, and it's probably no coincidence that it's in almost the same position in the running order. Can't say I liked it or loathed it really. It's not Doctor Who - the first episode that feels like it's from another series and which just happens to feature the Doctor and Rose as guest stars. Even the X-Files like music encouraged and enhanced that feeling. Next week ... we seem to have a riff on the old favourite children's novel Marianne Dreams, filmed as the superb Paperhouse. I do hope it does something new with the idea and isn't just a retread.

Doctor Who - The Satan Pit

One of the problems with cliff hangers is that they can set you up for something which then doesn't deliver. This new series of Who seems to have a problem with this, and the majority of the cliff hangers we get are not really cliff hangers at all, but breaks in the narrative designed to up the ante. We had the 'and with a bound they were free' one at the end of Rise of the Cybermen and now we get something similar here ... all the tension and power of the end of the last episode evaporates. The pit is open. Nothing came out of it. The planet stabilises and the threat mostly goes. This is somewhat disappointing. Furthermore Jefferson's shooting of the Ood seems to have no visible results - if we had seen them dropping then maybe it would have been better. As it is I think we only see one dead Ood a lot later on in one of the service shafts. Given that last episode we witnessed the horrific sight of a dead crew member floating in space, surely seeing some dead monsters lying around would not be a problem? The action is now split. Deep in the planet, the Doctor and Ida wonder how to explore the pit - which is a deep shaft under the hatch, and on the base, Rose and the others head for Ood habitation using maintenance tunnels so that Danny can transmit something to disable the Ood who are all trying to kill them. The Beast gets chatty again and talks to everyone through the Ood, it seems to know all their secrets and lives and even claims that Rose will die in battle very soon. The music in this sequence, and indeed in this whole episode, is much better than previously. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it. It seemed a lot more effective and subdued, underpinning the action rather than competing with it. After the Beast has a go at demoralising everyone, the Doctor retorts with some hope for everyone ... a nice counterpoint and demonstrating well the Doctor's approach to life and humanity. The Doctor and Ida try and return to the surface but the Beast makes the cable break, destroying the capsule under 10 miles of cable (I wonder how big a reel that would have to be). But the Doctor and Ida use the cable and wind it onto another drum in order to lower the Doctor into the pit. Nice idea, but wholly impractical. The cable would be made of steel and be heavy and tangled. I seriously doubt that two people could easily wind it onto another reel for re-use, even if they could find the broken end. Meanwhile the folks in the base are having fun scooting through tunnels as Captain Zack routes the air to follow them around. I'm really not sure that all this was needed as the effort and power needed to constantly flush and fill the sections with air was surely more than just sealing all the non-relevant sections and airating the bits they needed to go through. But if it had been easier then we'd have lost some great tension, as well as Jefferson sacrificing himself. And of course there's the superb moment where Toby turns to the pursuing Ood, and, eyes flashing red, gestures them to keep quiet - he is still posessed! A brilliant moment and very well executed. Our survivors head for the escape rocket and blast off, Rose having to be drugged to stop her staying to wait for the Doctor. Meanwhile the Doctor runs out of cable and decides to drop the rest of the way... a little rash perhaps. But he is safe and falls onto a convenient cushion of air. But why? He finds cave paintings showing the Beast being trapped and two mysterious glowing flasks. Beyond them is the Beast itself - a massive and impressive demon creature shackled and chained in the heart of the planet. This creature cannot speak, it is all might, and the Doctor realises that the intelligence is elsewhere ... on the ship with Rose ... Rose also realises the truth as Toby tells her to keep quiet when she starts to muse on why they are being allowed to escape. It was a shame that the shackled Beast did not speak and was relegated to token monster status. All the great monsters in Doctor Who were memorable because they conversed and spoke and were a little bit more than just a rampaging thing, and this one seemed a waste. It was also all a little obvious. We expected there to be a demon-like beast in the pit and there it was! What happened to trying to surprise the audience with something they were not expecting? I was half expecting the massive creature to be just a guardian, and that the real Beast would be revealed to be Sutekh or some other entity, trapped for all eternity ... but no. But now it gets really complicated with the Doctor trying to figure out what he should do ... should he break the flasks or not? The trap is that if the Beast is freed then the planet falls into the black hole but if he does not break the flasks, then the Beast's intelligence escapes in the rocket. But the Doctor trusts in Rose and so breaks the flasks (I wonder if they were a nod to Fenric in The Curse of Fenric - another all powerful entity/force in the Doctor Who universe). This stops the gravity field and the planet starts to fall into the black hole. The rocket too, and for some reason the Beast manifests through Toby again and gives the game away by ranting, so Rose breaks the window and removes Toby's seatbelt so he is sucked out into space. The Beast in the planet starts to burn (no idea why this happened though it did look good) and the Doctor suddenly finds the TARDIS there. What? How? The TARDIS was in a storeroom thing on the base and fell into a chasm during an earthquake. There was no other debris there, the roof of the cavern was not open to the sky, so how the flip did the TARDIS get there? I could postulate that perhaps the HADS system was working and it moved itself ... So the Doctor uses the TARDIS to rescue Ida before the planet is destroyed and then tows the rocket to safety. All is well, if a little simplistic in the resolution. We never find out who or what the Beast was, where it came from, or even whether it is now destroyed (something that old, powerful and long lived may be able to survive a black hole - after all if it existed before the universe was created, it survived the creation process ...) But this vagiary is nice. Sometimes we don't need everything sorted out for us neatly. Overall this was a crackingly exciting conclusion to the story, and it mostly fitted well with part one. I'd like to watch both episodes together though. I really have no idea why the Beast wanted the Doctor to descend into the pit (breaking the cable and so on to keep him down there) but the inferrence was that there was another power at play here and it was the captors who wanted someone to break the flasks ... but if they wanted this to happen then why bother to chain the Beast at all, why not just send it into the black hole in the first place? I don't know what the business with killing Scooti was all about in part one, nor why the Ood were trying to kill everyone (if everyone died then the Beast's intelligence would never have escaped). But it was a great episode, very well directed and visually stunning and exciting. Very enjoyable. Next week ... Peter Kay, some sort of lizard monster thing, and we're looking for Rose ...

Doctor Who - The Impossible Planet

This series of Who is just getting better and better. The Impossible Planet was by far the best episode I think I've seen so far ... it cranked up the tension and just oozed effectiveness from every pore. What an enjoyable experience. The TARDIS arrives on a deep space exploration sanctuary where a small crew are trying to keep things together. The planet they are on - which at one point they say is unnamed but then say it's called Kroktor (or something) in the scriptures of Valtino (whatever they are) which translates as 'the bitter pill', and it's in orbit around a black hole designated K37J5. Of course this is impossible, but it's happening, and the debris of the universe is being sucked into the hole around them - including any atmosphere that the planet might have. The people we get to meet - Ida Scott (efficient science officer); Zachary Cross Flane (serious acting captain); Mr Jefferson (cold head of security); Danny Bartock (right-on ethics committee); Toby Zed (uncertain archaeology) and Scooti Manista (cute trainee maintenance) - all seem nice people, but are a little generic. Scooti is apparently 20 years old, and one wonders therefore how long it took for the group to get to this planet, and to then build/construct the complex base that they live in, to set up the drilling and to get 10 miles deep ... maybe they start them young in maintenance. The TARDIS is lost when there's an earthquake and a section of the base is sheared away, and the Doctor and Rose seem trapped there. However the crew are busy drilling down into the planet to try and locate a power source there which they want to tap into. This power source is also keeping a gravity well open which is how they arrived. The gravity in the base seems OK, and also on the surface as Scooti goes out in a space suit to repair something ... why wasn't she blown away or dragged off the surface into the black hole? That gravity must be awfully strong. But now the plot starts to kick in. The computer and the strange Cthulhuian Ood creatures (who speak through their balls! And while we're on that subject, if those ball things are translating for them, how would they know whether the translations were correct or not? Wouldn't they just assume that they were?) start to spout pseudo Biblical phrases like 'The Beast and his armies shall rise from the pit and make war with God' and 'He is awake'. Very spooky though. Spookier still is what happens to Toby. While examining some fragments brought up by the drilling, which are covered with runes, he hears whispering behind him and an incredible voice tells him that if he looks around then he is dead. This is Gabriel Woolf ... Doctor Who fans will know his voice well as he was the voice of Sutekh the Destroyer in the 1975 story Pyramids of Mars (and maybe there's a connection here as Sutekh was meant to be Satan as well ... hmm) and his tones are creepy to the extreme. Poor Toby discovers that the runes have transferred to his hands, and then his face is covered with them as he is possessed by the Beast. I was vagely reminded of the Pokemon Jigglypuff which would put its victims to sleep by singing to them and then write all over their faces with black marker pen ... but back to the plot. Toby goes for a wander outside without a space suit and Scooti sees him. Next thing, he's making the window by her break with some sort of power and poor Scooti is sucked out. The first death and very horrible too. But hang on ... if there's no atmosphere, then why weren't Toby and Scooti imploded or exploded or whatever happens to unprotected humans in this circumstance? The drilling stops - they have hit point zero, and so some investigation is in order. Toby is back to normal now, though he is behaving a little Lady Macbeth in checking his hands all the time. But who do they decide to send down? Ida I can believe, she is the science officer after all, but the Doctor? And only these two? Very strange indeed. Why not the archaeologist, or someone from security (wearing a red shirt just to be on the safe side)? There are others on the base after all - we just don't get to see them very much. But no. It's Ida and the Doctor make the trip. And at the bottom? A vast cave, ancient buildings and carvings, and a 30 foot across metal hatch-thing in the ground. For no particular reason, everything now seems to happen at once ... the Ood all go a bit wierd, advancing on people in a threatening way, and using their translator ball to kill a random person ... Toby gets written on again and reveals that he knows Jefferson's secrets before passing on the writing to the Ood who advance menacingly on Rose and the others at the top of the shaft ... the gravity field fails, and the planet starts to fall into the black hole ... and the hatch opens down below. The camera rises from the hole under the hatch and the voice of the beast announces that it is free ... and we crash breathlessly into the closing titles, and with no annoying NEXT WEEK trailer immediately after as well. A brilliant cliff hanger. It's all go, and I can't wait for next week to see how it all resolves itself. I hope and pray that they don't go and spoil it all with something naff ... but we will have to see. Overall a superb episode, spoilt only by some inappropriate music on a couple of occasions (when the initial earthquake happens and also when the Doctor and Ida descend into the shaft) and also the cringe-worthy scenes between the Doctor and Rose as they discuss houses and mortgages. Leave it out guys or get a room as they say.

Doctor Who - The Idiot's Lantern

Like last year's The Unquiet Dead, Mark Gatiss gets another historical adventure, this time going not quite so far back in time, but to 1953 and to the Coronation of Queen Elisabeth II (which took place on 2 June 1953). As the story opens we're introduced to Mr Magpie, a superb character well played by Ron Cook, owner of a television store. He has problems, being in debt, but his problems mount when a red lightning bolt hits his television ariel, and a television announcer talks directly to him before his face is sucked into the TV by bolts of red lightning. This is a cracking opening, and sets the scene for what is to come. The Doctor and Rose are on Earth, expecting to go and see Elvis Presley perform on the Ed Sullivan show at TV studios in New York (this would therefore place the date the Doctor expected to arrive as either 9 September 1956, 28 October 1956 or 6 January 1957) however they are in Muswell Hill, London in 1953! I thought the Doctor had control over the TARDIS now - the idea of him arriving where he doesn't expect is slightly out of place. However there is no lead in from The Age of Steel, so we have no idea how many adventures the Doctor and Rose have had in the interim. As the Doctor realises they are in the wrong place and time, someone (Mr Gallagher) is taken from one of the houses by police, their head covered. There is much consternation, and one of the the locals, a boy called Tommy Connelly (played by Rory Jennings - I knew I'd heard his name before. He was in an episode of Urban Gothic: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/davidjhowe00/e_s01_e11.htm), mentions that people are turning into monsters - something that appears to have happened already in the Connelly household as their Gran (Margaret John) is now in an upper room, and the family are terrified by her banging on the floor. The tension builds nicely, and we're kept wondering as to what has happened to Gran. However this doesn't worry Mr Connelly - Eddie (Jamie Foreman) - who has been watching a little too much EastEnders and comes over like Al Murray's Pub Landlord at every turn. Meanwhile, Magpie, under instruction from the strange announcer, has built a portable TV set. These scenes are really excellent, with Magpie's reactions - 'burning me' - a great counterpoint to the TV lady. Getting Maureen Lipman to play the announcer was a stroke of genius. She manages to bring over haughty power, calcluating alienness and genuine menace in all her appearances. A brilliant performance. So the Doctor and Rose decide to pay a visit to the Pub Landlord and family, and Rose suddenly displays talents beyond keeping her mouth open too long - lucky that Jackie went out with a sailor and that Rose knows all about Union Jacks and Flags as a result ... well you would. Wouldn't you? We finally get to see Gran, and the poor dear has no face! This is terrifying stuff, and incredibly well realised. Shame it makes no sense whatsoever. Why should wiping someone's brain make their face vanish? And how do these people breathe? Through their ears maybe? I liked the clenching, grasping hands, but again, why? Are they in pain? In torment of some sort? If so, then they all recover pretty quickly at the end. So as the Doctor races off after the police, who arrive to take Granny Connolly away, Rose decides to do some investigating of her own and turns up at Magpie's shop, only to have her own brain sucked and face wiped. The Doctor meanwhile is hauled up by Detective Inspector Bishop (Sam Cox) and ends up helping him. The scene when he sees Rose all faceless in front of him is brilliantly done, which shows how good Tennant can be ... it's just a shame that he doesn't seem able to be able to do angry very well. To be honest, the Doctor started to remind me of someone in this story, and I couldn't think who ... but then it came to me. Eric Idle. But Eric Idle as his 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' character from Monty Python. The Doctor seemed to veer off into monalogues about things which I started to hear as a variant of the 'nudge, nudge' man. Most disconcerting. And when combined with the Pub Landlord, this started to break down the believability of this episode. I think the main issue is that the Doctor is not a part of the episode - he stands separate from the action, and he's almost like a narrator or something. I hope he can get more involved soon. The next day dawns, and family and friends (excluding Gran of course) assemble at the Connolly's to watch the Coronation. However family tiffs ensue and young Tommy goes off with the Doctor and Bishop to investigate the TV shop, wherein they find disembodied faces on the televisions (why?) and the portable TV. They are also confronted by the announcer, now revealed to be something called the Wire, executed on its own planet, but escaped into space, only to arrive on Earth (shades of The Hand of Fear). It feeds on electrical activity in the brain and wants to take power from people watching television. Bishop is faceless but the Doctor and Tommy escape as the Wire sees that the Doctor is armed (with his all-purpose sonic screwdriver), and they collect together piles of equipment from the TV shop before chasing after Magpie who has taken the portable TV with the Wire now in it to the Alexandra Palace transmitter, intending to allow the Wire to feed on a wider scale. Aside from the question of how Magpie gets into Ally Pally (even the Doctor is accosted by a guard), how does he get access to climb the mast! On this day, the security there would have been immense. But Magpie manages to do this, plugs in his portable and everyone's faces are dragged into the TV. But the Doctor connects up his gizmo which - I hesitate to say - reverses the polarity and turns the receiver into a transmitter and traps the Wire. Now ... don't think about this too long ... Ally Pally is a transmitter anyway, so Magpie's box turned it into a receiver ... and then the Doctor reverses this back, and manages to record the Wire onto a Betamax video tape ... Neat idea. I'm sure I've seen it before though, that something can be recorded to trap it ... can't think where, but I'm sure you folks will let me know. So all is back to normal. Rose gets her face back (she must have missed standing with her mouth open) as do all the others that the Wire fed on, and all is well. We even get a resolution to the small story of the Connelly's as Mrs C (Debra Gillett) kicks the Pub Landlord out. But Rose persuades Tommy not to cut his dad off completely and to go after him, which he does. This is an excellent ending to a superb episode. Despite concerns about the characterisation of the Doctor, and his general uninvolvedness, I loved this story. The mood was excellent and well maintained. The faceless people were terrifying (and brought back fond memories of Sapphire and Steel where a faceless man was on the stair ... http://www.steve-p.org/ss/mwaf1.htm) and the villain was one of the best we've seen. Next week ... black holes, the TARDIS going further than ever before, creepy looking monsters with tentacular faces ... looks superb.

Doctor Who - The Age of Steel

The story continues from last week ... after a recap of events, the solution elicited a gasp of 'What?' from around the room. The Doctor escapes from 'maximum deletion' by the Cybermen with the little power gizmo from the TARDIS. Now this was the thing that the Doctor had to keep alive to allow the TARDIS to repair itself so they could all escape? And he discharges it. But afterwards, everything is fine and it will only take a few more hours to recharge again. Unfortunately this all throws the gravitas of the first episode into relief as it's obvious that there really wasn't much to be worried about here. Meanwhile we discover that Pete Tyler is the mysterious 'Gemini' who has been feeding the Preachers their information, and that Ricky is only London's 'most wanted' as far as number of unpaid parking tickets go. Lumic is obviously getting bored as he orders activation of his earpods and hypnotizes everyone in London to come to Battersea for upgrading into Cybermen. So what was all the business with the Cybermen crashing the party for then?

The Doctor, Pete, Rose, Jake, Mickey, Ricky and Mrs Moore are all chased around a lot by Cybermen - the Doctor does something clever with his sonic screwdriver to make them go away, but when Mickey and Ricky are chased, Ricky suffers the Cyber Electric Death Grip (hereafter called CEDG) and is killed, leaving Mickey to carry on with the role of hero. The wonderful Mr Crane turns on Lumic and tries to kill him, but he gets a taste of CEDG and the Cybermen decide that Lumic needs an upgrade himself to be their Controller. This is a lovely performance from Colin Spaull as Mr Crane - one of the best in the episodes in fact. He was very chilling with shades of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang mixed in with elements of Packer from Doctor Who's The Invasion. The Doctor, Pete, Rose, Jake, Mickey and Mrs Moore arrive at Battersea Power Station (a wonderful piece of CGI realises the building, Zeppelin parked on top, and belching black smoke into the sky) and take The Five Doctors's routes into the building: Above; Between; Below. While Jake and Mickey disable the transmitter in the Zeppelin, Rose and Pete will enter via the front door pretending to be zombified, and the Doctor and Mrs Moore will take an underground coolant tunnel into the complex. The scenes here between the Doctor, Rose and Mickey, start to highlight why I feel that this series isn't working for me as well as the last. It's based in the relationship between the Doctor and Rose. It's so inclusive, and Mickey can do nothing but feel like a spare cog, or the tin dog. The Doctor and Rose only have eyes and thoughts for each other it seems, and this hurts. Doctor Who always used to be a fantasy - in that the TARDIS could arrive in your street and you could be whisked away for adventures and friendship - but not if Rose is there. She is behaving like a spiteful, jealous ex-girlfriend whenever anyone looks like taking away some of the Doctor's attention from her, and I don't like it. Poor Mickey. From being the idiot, now he is the person we most relate to. Having to watch his girlfriend fawn and drool over someone else is bad enough, but to have no way of redeeming himself or making himself feel any better stinks. So everyone gets into the Power Station unscathed. Pete and Rose encounter a Cyberman Jackie, but scenes that should have been quite shocking and chilling are rendered somewhat soulless, and I think the problem is that the Cybermen all look the same. It would have been nice to have seen something of the conversion process on Jackie, to see something of the human remaining in the Cyberman, but maybe to do this would have been to skate too close to Star Trek's Borg. Maybe you can't win however you try and do it. There are some wonderful scenes in the coolant tunnel which turns out to be unexpectedly full of deactivated Cybermen. Very spooky. But why are they there? Wouldn't it have been easier for Lumic to simply build more warehouses somewhere to keep them in? And of course they come to life and chase the Doctor and Mrs Moore to the exit, which the Doctor is somehow able to weld shut with his sonic screwdriver. Mrs Moore disables another Cyberman with an electromagnetic bomb (exactly when did she have time to put one of these together anyway - they seem to have been on the run ever since leaving Pete's party) and the Doctor explores how the creatures work, and realises that the emotional inhibitor chip could be turned off with a code. The sequence with the Cyberman reverting to its past identity - that of Sally Fielder - was really rather excellent. Showing them in a different light and eliciting some sympathy. But then Mrs Moore receives the CEGD from a Cyberman who has learned to walk quietly, and the Doctor is hauled off to Cyber Control. Mickey and Jake disable the transmitter with the help of a convenient Cyberman, and the formerly controlled humans panic and run riot. Meanwhile the Doctor, Rose and Pete are reunited in Cyber Control and meet the CyberController - an upgraded Lumic, complete with his very own Gigeresque steam powered armchair. As the Doctor talks with Lumic, Mickey manages to log into the CCTV system and watches and listens to the exchange. The Doctor notices the camera, and in an amazing leap of assumption, realises that Mickey is watching. He thus tells Mickey where to find the code to shut off the emotion inhibitors and gets him to text the code to Rose's phone, which he promptly uses to transmit it to all the Cybermen ... but hang on ... this is a great idea, but one which has been somewhat mishandled. I think the point is that all of Lumic's Cybus companies produce hardware and software which is compatible with each other. Sensible move and something that Microsoft and Apple do today. And so the phone would then plug into the main computer and transmit the signal as it would be compatible. But this is not a Cybus phone. It's Rose's phone from real-Earth. So why does it fit? All that was needed to solve this was in episode 1 for the Doctor to procure a couple of Cybus phones for Rose and Mickey and to talk about everything being compatible and the problem is solved. Maybe I'm thinking about this too hard again. So the emotion inhibitors are turned off, and the Cybermen all go mad, staggering about, clutching their heads and moaning electronically. First of all, would they really all go mad? There must be some folks out there who would quite like the idea of being a silver giant with no aches and pains, in a strong body that would live forever (or at least until the brain died). But even if you do go mad, then why does one of the Cybermen's heads explode? And why does the factory then start to blow up? Mickey to the rescue and the Doctor, Rose and Pete race to the roof where a handy Zeppelin awaits them, but the CyberController is hot on their heels and gets on the dangling rope ladder as well. So it's Sonic Screwdriver to the rescue again, this time in rope burning mode, and the Controller falls into the furnace below (shades of Aliens with the Alien Queen's death at the end I felt). All is well, and we conclude with Pete getting back to work, refusing to accept that Rose is his daughter, and Mickey deciding to be a hero and to stay, much to Rose's disappointment. But I can't blame him. As far as the TARDIS is concerned, it's the Doctor and Rose show all the way. Overall, a very entertaining episode which wraps the story up nicely. Except. I mentioned last review about all the stuff with the time vortex vanishing and so on, and hoped there would be some sort of explanation. Well there wasn't, and so this has to be the biggest cop out ever. Very disappointing (unless of course it has something to do with the ongoing arc, which so far seems very obscure - but then the Bad Wolf one made little sense until the end, and even then it wasn't really explained).

A final word on the Cyberman voices. Disappointing. Somehow they lacked power and presence. I do think they would have been better to have gone with the electronic ones from The Moonbase and Tomb of the Cybermen ... So next week we have something about televisions and people turning into monsters and Maureen Lipman. I have no idea what it's all about.

Doctor Who - The Rise of the Cybermen

Whoo - Cybermen. Now this was what I've been waiting for. The Daleks never really did it for me. Ok, they were quite cool, but in the sixties, there was only one monster that terrified. And that was the Cybermen. I suspect this was because for anyone growing up in the late sixties, it was the Cybermen who were the everpresent menace on Doctor Who. From The Tenth Planet, through The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel In Space and The Invasion they dominated. And they changed their appearance and voices most every time as well. So far more than the Daleks, it was the Cybermen who demanded a 2006 makeover. And in The Rise of the Cybermen we got just that. This is not to say that the episode was perfect, there were a few niggles, though far fewer than recent episodes, and it is hard to see at this stage whether what appear to be niggles will be resolved next week. But onto the show. Apart from it starting 20 minutes later than scheduled due to some rubbishy sport overrunning or something, the eventual pre-credits sequence was sublime. That bloke off Only Fools and Horses in a Davros-like wheelchair acting like Doctor Evil from the Austin Powers films. When he said the line, 'Do you know me?' to the hazy light-haloed figure of his creation, I expected the sentence to continue with, 'Dave?' at the end (and apologies to anyone who has never seen Roger Lloyd Pack as Trigger on Only Fools and Horses - basically the character calls one of the other characters 'Dave' all the time, even though this isn't his name ...) But the unseen thing (obviously a Cyberman) replies, and we get to hear their voices ... hmmm ... initial feelings of uncertainty. But no time to think as Lumic orders his lackey killed by Electric Cyber-Death Grip and then heads for England (and we cut away before he raises his little finger to his mouth and starts laughing maniacally). Good start ... but how to involve the Doctor and friends? Well, there's a massive explosion on the TARDIS for some reason, and the time vortex disappears, and the TARDIS dies and ends up in London. All a little drastic. And all a lot unexplained. I hope these elements are covered off later on as otherwise this is perhaps the biggest mcguffin ever to get the Doctor into the action. But it's not just London, it's alternate London. And how do we know? By some brilliant CGI Zeppelins flying overhead. Oh, and Rose's dad not being dead after all. To add more coincidence to the proceedings, Pete Tyler is best mates with John Lumic (although I have no idea why the cheesy 21st Century equivalent of a snake-oil peddler is of any use to the multi-national, every company on Earth-owning Lumic), and is also on 'come to my wife's birthday party' terms with the President of Earth, played to perfection by Don Warrington. Warrington was simply superb. Very watchable indeed. Although our living room echoed to an impression of him on Grumpy Old Men, complaining about Zeppelins. So now the plot is starting to stack up ... Lumic wants permission from the UK Government to allow him to continue with his (at this point) mystery Cybus programme, but this permission is denied by president Don. However Lumic, being the sound and well balanced citizen that he is, promptly orders another lackey, Mr Crane, to commence the programme anyway. Thus several hapless tramps are abducted and carted off for Cyber-conversion. The ensuing sequence of knives and screaming and soulless factories, concluding with a shot of Battersea Power Station is brilliant and inspired. Meanwhile we get some more really neat CGI as Jackie Tyler (here even bitchier and spoiled than in the real world) is 'accessed' by Lumic via her earpieces to obtain the security arrangements for her party (though why such an airhead would even know them is beyond me - and as Lumic and Pete are such buddies, then why not get them from Pete?). Meanwhile, loads of other plot threads are kicking off. The Doctor conveniently finds a single glowing power source in the TARDIS and realises they're not trapped at all, but that in 24 hours this will give them enough power to escape (there is some waffle about the power being different on this alternate Earth and the TARDIS not being able to use it - but then how did Rose's mobile phone work? Obviously satellite transmissions and telephone technology is identical ...) The Doctor and Rose see everyone freeze in mid step as the 'daily download' occurs - news and information from Cybus - but what a strange time to do this: 14:40pm. And what about anyone driving or operating machinery when this happens? Do they freeze as well? Why not do this at 3am when most people are asleep? Or surely there would be an option to receive the download when convienient to the individual. Even Microsoft doesn't dictate when your PC is updated. Seems a little thoughtless to me. Rose pathetically decides she needs to see her Mum and Pete and so she and the Doctor pretend to be servants to infiltrate the party. Mickey goes to see his Gran, who is still alive, and then falls in with a group of three freedom fighters led by alternate world Mickey, who is bizarrely called Ricky. This unlikely group follow Lumic's International Electromatics (a neat nod to the past - a shame they couldn't have used the music from The Invasion as well) vans to Pete and Jackie's place and see the new Cybermen being let out for a stroll. We're now heading for the showdown as the Doctor coincidentally finds a computer and is able to access Lumic's earlier presentation to Don and Pete - careless of him to leave it somewhere accessible via the Internet - at the same time as Rose sees steel figures advancing on the house. Cue shattering glass and the Cybermen are revealed. Very impressive too. All steel and angles and military precision. Tall and imposing and really quite terrifying. That is, until they speak. The voice is a sort of lightly pitched warble, and the closest I can find in Cyber history is that of the Cyber Planner, again from The Invasion. Not a bad tack to take, but the voice should be louder and more dominating in my view. Compare the scenes of President Don standing off against the Cyberman in Jackie's house with those of Klieg facing the CyberController in The Tomb of the Cybermen. In that earlier story, the CyberController's voice is bold and powerful and very alien. This is what we should have had here. Oh well. Maybe it will grow on me. As the Cybermen start using Electric Cyber-Death Grip on everyone in the house - what happened to the people being needed for 'upgrade'? - the Doctor, Rose and Pete escape outside only to encounter hoards more Cybermen. Rickey and Mickey and the anonymous other two rebles (I don't think they are named in the episode) arrive with guns, but they are all surrounded and despite the Doctor's surrendering, the Cyberman pronounces that they are incompatibile and will be subject to 'maximum deletion'. Cue end titles ... and thank you thank you thank you there is no next episode trailer. Very well done. This is a story that just had to be more than one episode. There is no way that this could have all been fitted in, and the space that the longer length affords is well used, building ideas and characters and leaving lots to resolve next week. Noel Clarke as Mickey gets a lot more to do here and is obviously happy with that, wheras Billie Piper as Rose seems to get less to do and seems unhappy with that - her reaction at the Doctor even speaking to another girl seems to get her back up. Maybe she's really starting to become a liability here. Other thoughts: why do we have that annoying school bell sound in the incidental music. I thought it was apt in School Reunion and I forgot to mention it in my review of The Girl in the Fireplace. It is grating and annoying and I find that I'm growing not to like Murray Gold's music. It's either too loud and intrusive, or wrong for the visuals or both. Bring back Dudley Simpson is what I say. We get a description of what a Cyberman is: a brain grafted to a cybernetic body, with all emotion removed. When asked why, the Doctor explains that the process hurts. But pain is not an emotion. It is a response to stimuli. Just because you can't get angry or frightened, doesn't mean you can't feel pain ... But then if these things are just brains in robotic bodies, then there are no nerve endings anyway ... So next week we see the conclusion to this tale. Hopefully some resolutions and explanations as to the TARDIS's plight, and we get to find out whether John Lumic's plans for Cyber-domination come to fruition. See you then.

Cybermen and Covers and Voices

Cybermen. I have long had a great fascination for them. Unlike the Daleks, which never scared me, the Cybermen terrified me as a kid. Probably because I was a kid at the right time: The Moonbase, Tomb of the Cybermen, The Wheel in Space and The Invasion ... four of the best ever Cyber-tales and all sixties and all Troughton. But now, it's 2006 and the Cybermen are back as evidenced by the totally awesome cover for the new Radio Times ... wow. I love it to pieces. And then this morning (which is Tuesday 9th May) I heard the new voice on a radio advert for the show this morning ... golly gosh oh my! At least it was a new voice. For all I know the standard Cybermen sound different from the CyberLeader who sounds different from the CyberController - it is the latter who is pictured in all his brainy glory on the front of the Radio Times. The voice sounded to me closest to that of the CyberPlanner from The Invasion ... which seems appropriate as International Electromatics, the company which featured in that sixties story seems to have a part to play in the forthcoming 2006 adventure. Roll on Saturday :)

RSS Feed

My blog enters the 21st Century ... sharp eyed viewers will notice the appearance of a little 'RSS' logo on the left hand side. This allows this blog to be subscribed to and then read by a variety of hand held and other viewers ... so you can keep up to date with when I add updates and ramblings and so on. So go on ... you know you want to ... get a little Howeswho on your reader :) Click on the RSS and subscribe. David

Doctor Who - The Girl in the Fireplace

From a brilliant pre-credits opening, this episode went on to be one of the very best to date of either this series or the last. Steven Moffatt seems to have pulled out all the stops to present a coherent time travel adventure, which looks at the nature of time, and which manages, in the space of 45 minutes, to show a microcosmic view of what the Doctor goes through all the time. I suspect this is a follow-on from the comments last week in School Reunion that although Rose can spend her life with the Doctor, he cannot spend all of his life with her. From 1757 France, we head 3000 years into the future, to a grotty spacecraft hanging near the Diagmore Cluster in the 51st Century. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey arrive and start poking around. The Doctor soon spots an out-of-place fireplace and realises it's a time portal to the past. Through the fire he speaks to a 7 year old girl, Renette, and discovers that she is in 1727. Moments later, the Doctor makes the entire fireplace turn through 180 degrees and finds himself in her bedroom ... but it's now months later for her - time runs at different speeds it seems (and this is perhaps the biggest flaw in the episode, but more on that later), but more than this, there is a spooky clockwork robot hiding under her bed. In scenes guaranteed to terrify the kids, the Doctor flushes it out and it attacks him. But how did it get into the room? And indeed when? The Doctor was by the entrance to the time portal the whole time. Oh well ... Back and forth, the Doctor immobilises it with a fire extinguisher but it teleports away. Seconds later, the Doctor returns through the fireplace, but now some 20 years have passed and Renette is a beautiful young woman. She decides to snog the Doctor's face off before heading away - leaving him someone bewhildered and happy that he snogged Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, otherwise known as Madame de Pompadour, mistress to King Louis XV. Returning to the ship, the Doctor finds a horse (!) and meanwhile Mickey and Rose have made the grizly discovery of organic components in the hardware of the ship. They all find more time portals looking in on the same woman but they cannot figure out why she seems so important to the clockwork inhabitants of the ship. Though one mirror, they see Renette confronted by another robot and they burst through and immobilise it. It reveals itself to be repair drone seven and that an Ion storm caused them problems. 'We did not have the parts,' it repeats when asked about the problem and where the crew has gone, and the Doctor realises that the answer is correct to both questions: the drones used the crew for spare parts. But now they want Renette as apparently 'they are the same'. Mickey and Rose return to the ship through the mirror while the Doctor reads Renette's mind to try and find out why she is important to them - she is 23 at this time. But she reads his mind too and realises how lonely he is. She promptly invites him to come dancing. Now this may be a euphamism as in The Doctor Dances last year, or maybe they really do go dancing ... either way Rose and Mickey are captured by the clockwork drones and sedated prior to surgery. But the Doctor rolls in blind drunk and saves them by pouring multigrade anti-oil into one of the drones and switching the rest off at the control panel - his being drunk was all an act. But he knows now that the ship is 37 years old, and so Renette will be taken when she turns 37. As the Doctor tries to close the time windows down, the drones come back to life and announce that Renette is now complete and teleport off to get her - or her head which is all they need. They seem to want to use her brain as a command circuit (but what then has been controlling the drones in the meantime?). More time jumping takes place, and Renette realises she must take the 'slow path' to her destiny when she hits 37, and has confidence that the Doctor will be there for her at that time. There is some lovely dialogue here: 'One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel,' and 'It's the way it's always been. The monsters and the Doctor. You can't have one without the other,' and 'The Doctor is worth the monsters,' this latter echoing 'Some things are worth getting your heart broken for,' from last week's episode. Renette is catured by the drones, but the Doctor arrives by crashing through the mirror/time portal on horseback (so there was a reason for the horse) and saves the day by showing the drones that they are now all trapped on Earth and there is no point in them carrying on - shades of Remembrance of the Daleks where the Doctor talked the Dalek to death. Here it's handled better, but it's still a little unsatisfying. If the robot droids were all being controlled from the ship, then the moment the link was severed, they should all have just collapsed. The Doctor is trapped on Earth with Renette, but he doesn't seem too upset. In fact he seems positively looking forward to it - and who can blame him. All that dancing to look forward to. But she has something to show him (oo er) and it's the fireplace from Paris. Conveniently 'offline' when the ship closed down, so now, all it takes is a good thump in the right place and a bit of the old sonic screwdriver and we have a now-operational time door back to the ship. But here's the brilliant bit. The Doctor goes back to check on things, but when he returns for Renette, she has now died - it being six years hence. These final scenes are brilliant in their simplicity and made my eyes well up several times. As I said at the start, it's a microcosm of the Doctor's life - stepping in and out of the lives of others, and always being the lonely angel. But ... as I mentioned ... the biggest problem is that these time doors don't seem to operate with any logic. Sometimes time runs the same time between them (as when the Doctor talks to Renette on two occasions through the fireplace), other times it's running faster in France (like the months passing in the few minutes it takes the Doctor to operate the fireplace-door at the start, but then years pass in France in not much more time on the ship. And when Renette comes through onto the ship for a minute or two ... how does she then return to her own time? Or was she missing for a few years in the interim? I loved The Girl in the Fireplace from beginning to end. The acting is awesome from all parties. The costume design brilliant, and the scenic design also works extremely well: the contrast between the ship and France is very well drawn. However if the ship is only 37 years old, then why is it so grotty inside ... And the final mystery ... why were the drones after this particular woman? This is superbly handled in a coda where we see her portrait behind the dematerialising TARDIS and then a pull back to reveal the name of the ship ... The SS Madame de Pompadour. Next week: Cybermen. That is all.

WHO Websites

The BBC seems to be having a field day with spin-off websites. Here's a few: http://www.deffryvale.co.uk/index.shtml http://www.deffryvale.co.uk/historyclub.shtml http://www.deffryvaleschool.org.uk/ http://www.millingdaleicecream.co.uk/ http://www.guinevere.org.uk/ http://www.cheapserve.co.uk/members/09032/ http://www.cheapserve.co.uk/members/7974/ http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/ http://www.geocomtex.net/ http://www.unit.org.uk/ http://www.leamingtonspalifeboatmuseum.co.uk/ http://www.visittorchwood.co.uk/ (the password is 'victoria') Interestingly, this one comes up as a BBC site but with no content at present: http://www.internationalelectromatics.co.uk/ David

Doctor Who - School Reunion

What a strange little tale. I think this is another story where it could really have done with a second episode to add some meat and depth to the situations. As it is, the whole thing is so fast and furious that you don't get to know anyone. Which is a shame as the episode is about relationships and we could have done with more time to explore it all. The Doctor and Rose are at a school - Deffy Vale High School as it tells us on the wall of the canteen hall - as a result of Mickey calling them to let them know that something strange seemed to be happening. There are two plots emerging, and neither have the slightest thing to do with each other - a very strange state of affairs and something which doesn't work in dramatic terms. The established wisdom is that in a drama (be it literary, theatre, TV or film) it will work better, be more rounded and 'feel' right if all the characters are driven by the same or similar needs or aspirations, if the core themes are reflected throughout. But here we have a very strong theme of companionship and love running side by side with the story of a bunch of generic 'monsters-r-us' trying to gain ultimate power for themselves. These are uneasy bedfellows and show why this story should have been longer. It would have been far more effective if, for example, the Krillitanes were not evil, but were seeking something related to that which Sarah Jane is seeking: closure on a period of her life; maybe hanging onto past dreams ... Then the whole of the mcguffin about the intelligence-enhanced schoolkids using computers to solve the so called 'Skasis Paradigm' (perhaps a sly acknowledgement of the Skeksis from the 1982 Henson film Dark Crystal the design of which seem to have inspired the Krillitanes) and provide ultimate power to the Krillitanes could have been dropped and rethought. If it was really that easy to crack this paradigm then why has no-one else ever done it? As it is, the Krillitane plot is the poorest aspect of the episode. But by far the strongest element was the complex relationship between Sarah Jane Smith, Rose, Mickey and the Doctor. Sarah is feeling cheated, as though there was something wrong with her, that she had done something wrong which was why the Doctor never came back for her and why she spent the rest of her life waiting for him. Rose realises that she is just one in a long line of travelling companions for the Doctor, and that just as the Doctor never mentions Sarah, so may she never be mentioned once she leaves him. Mickey realises that he is the robot dog - the reliable source of information. The 'stay in the car'/'stay at home' character who has all the answers. And the Doctor is forced to admit that he loves his companions (though he cannot use the word), and is alone despite seeing them all grow old and die. It's a hard equation, and yet the scripting and the acting allow it to soar, and the end result is a sequence of realisations and acknowledgements on all levels which brings tears to the eyes. The idea of Mickey realising that he is the 'robot dog' also made me wonder if this was setting up something for later on. With Mickey travelling with the Doctor and Rose at the end (much to Rose's displeasure) does this mean that he will sacrifice himself for them the same way that K9 does in this episode? Certainly food for thought. Unfortunately there are some less than satisfactory elements. The inclusion of the reference to Torchwood at the start was OK I suppose, but are we going to have this rammed at us every week? What was all the stuff about the Krillitane oil about? Where does the oil come from? Why does the school explode at the end? Did K9 detonate himself? It's probably, however, the Krillitanes exploding after getting the oil on them - as happened with the dinner lady earlier in the episode. And the cliched fat kid, Kenny, who saves the day. Oh dear. Also, why did Sarah have K9 in the back of the car at all? She said the dog didn't work and had broken ages ago. Maybe she drives around all day with the dog there? And how did he get out of the car to save the day in the canteen? Maybe we can just gloss over this - perhaps Mickey lifted him out after crashing through the school doors. There are some lovely elements too. I was especially impressed with the simple effect of the Krillitanes attacking the staff seen through the frosted staff room window. Very nicely done. As were the Krillitanes themselves, though a little too CGI fast, they looked quite effective. I was slightly puzzled as to why Mr Finch (or Brother Lassar - spelling guessed at) was human when the rest were bat-things. I know they sort of explained this, but I don't think it made much sense. And if Finch was in human form, how did he get on top of the building opposite the cafe to keep an eye on the Doctor and co? A final puzzling point with regards to Finch. He hears the Doctor say he's a Time Lord, but then seems to know that he's the last surviving one. But the Time War was in the future wasn't it? The Dalek in Dalek had fallen back through time and that was to the year 1938 (50 years before 2012 when Dalek was set), so how can there be no Time Lords in the year 2006 or whenever School Reunion is set? Overall I really enjoyed School Reunion, despite all my prior reservations about bringing back Sarah and K9. Elisabeth Sladen did a great job with the character and the role and managed to bring out the pathos well. Her early line 'I thought you died!' sounded so like her earlier incarnation, and she managed to play off against Billie Piper very well indeed. Anthony Head was awesome as Finch - a superb character, underplayed, and very well observed. Every movement, every word was delivered with understated precision and was a joy to watch. Next up ... clockwork people ... spaceships ... history ... I have no idea what The Girl in the Fireplace will be like!

Doctor Who - Tooth and Claw

That was a bit better. After the visually brilliant but scattershot plotting of New Earth, comes Tooth and Claw, a far tighter story with more great visuals and a werewolf to boot. One of the problems with reviewing is that it's always a lot easier to write something if there are elements which can be picked out as being lacking. With Tooth and Claw this is hard as the overall story is excellently paced, with some superb dialogue and some brilliant character pieces from the guest cast. We open with a group of Kung-fu monks arriving at a Scottish house and promptly delivering a mysterious covered cage to the cellar, wherein they have chained the Mistress of the house and most of her servants. When the cloth covering the cage is lifted, Mistress Isobel (Michelle Duncan) screams in abject horror ... A great start, but what exactly is she screaming at? As we see later, all that is in the cage is a somewhat quiet and weedy looking cowled figure ... The Doctor and his 'feral' companion arrive in a location they were not expecting to be, and promptly get involved in a story which sees a falling 'star' carrying an alien entity to Earth which can take on the appearance of a human while it waits to emerge. The Doctor and said companion take refuge in a building where the monster reveals itself and chases them, and a dwindling group of surviving humans, up to the top of the building, where the Doctor realises he can use the power of light, focussed by a diamond, to defeat the alien shapeshifter ... ... ah. Now hang on, that's the plot of Horror of Fang Rock! Surely not ... The main problem really is that, unlike Horror of Fang Rock, Tooth and Claw is all far too rushed to really develop the themes of an alien which can remain hidden until the appropriate moment. I remember with fondness the Doctor's wonderful episode-ending line in Horror that he thought he was locking the enemy out ... but instead he'd locked it in ... with them! Well there was none of this here. Instead we know from the word go who the monster is, and once it emerges then it's running and killing for the rest of the episode. Other points of comment: Queen Victoria was a bit of a wet fish. I'm not sure that Pauline Collins was the right choice for this part as she seemed totally lost in it. However, it is worth pointing out that the only reason that Collins seems weak is because the others were so strong. Particularly Ian Hanmore's awesome Father Angelo. A brilliant portrayal of the evil chief monk, and he really looked the part - sort of Richard O'Brien crossed with Patrick Stewart. It's a shame he died (or did he? We never saw this on screen) as he would be a great returning nemesis. The other character who impressed me was Jamie Sives as Captain Reynolds ... another brilliant piece of restrained acting. In fact, just about everyone was top notch. Which also had the effect of throwing Billie Piper's gooning into sharp relief. Rose's trying to get Queen Victoria to say 'We are not amused' was both silly and annoying. Maybe this was something included for the kids. Which is certainly what the werewolf was not - complete with the bone cracking sound effects which were left off the transformation of Dr Constantine in The Empty Child last year, the werewolf was scary, fast, growly and hairy and I'm sure the bringer of many nightmares last night. The deaths, though bloodless were likewise terrifying - in part because nothing was seen, leaving it all up to the fertile imaginations of children to decide what an 8 foot slavering, toothy man-wolf could do to a weak human body, especially given the state it left the cage in. Random questions: How does the Sonic Screwdriver now affect old-style mortice locks? How did Queen Victoria get her box from the 'safe' without the key to said 'safe'? Maybe they hadn't locked it. Why was Rose described as 'naked' when all but her arms were covered up? When Isobel noticed that the Monks were all garlanded with mistletoe and that the wolf left them alone, why did she then start cooking the stuff in the kitchen? Why not simply make more garlands from the piles of it left lying around? Why at the end when the wolf vanished, did the light from the telescope stop? It was still pointed at the moon. And while we're on that subject, where did the wolf go anyway? Moonlight made it change, but too much moonlight destroyed it? Made it go back to where it came? Caused it to super-evolve? I suppose it doesn't really matter, but this is another ending where the Doctor cobbles together some deus ex machina(**) to save the day ... it would be nice to have some 'proper' endings some times. I can't finish this review without mentioning Torchwood. Probably the most dreadful aspect of the episode. I internally groaned when the house was revealed as being called Torchwood house (and my kids also groaned unprompted by myself), but then the coda ... what a shoehorned, crowbarred piece of nonsense. And all this isn't even relevant - from all reports, Torchwood is not aimed at the same kiddie audience that Doctor Who is. It's an adult show planned for an after-9pm timeslot ... so what's with the blatant cross promotion? If you're going to do this then at least be subtle about it. Overall I really enjoyed Tooth and Claw. A great little episode which is, as far as I can see anyway, totally internally consistent. The acting was brilliant (except perhaps for Piper's Rose who for the first time seemed out of sorts here) and the overall impact high. Next week we appear to have an episode of The Demon Headmaster to look forward to ... (** - Ok, ok, so Deus Ex Machina doesn't exactly have the meaning I intended here ... I *know* DEM usually means 'a god from the machine' - in other words a cop-out, a little like the ending of Boom Town perhaps - but according to my dictionary it can also mean 'a romantic or artificial ending' and this is closer to my intent here - that the endings seem to be artificial rather than flowing from or having any connection to the preceeding plot threads - Why does shining moonlight through the crystal affect the Wolf at all? What happens there and why does this resolve things?)

Doctor Who - New Earth

I had been really looking forward to seeing New Earth, the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who. And on the whole I wasn't disappointed. The story was written by Russell T Davies and had all the hallmarks of his work - a fast and furious pace, some great dialogue and also some gaping plot holes where things just don't stand up to any sort of detailed thought. We opened with Jackie and Mickey saying goodbye to Rose as she headed off for more adventures with the Doctor ... nice I suppose, but I hope we don't spend too much time this season dwelling on the sub-EastEnders soap plots (some hope). The TARDIS arrives on New Earth in the far future, summoned there by a note on his psychic paper to visit ward 26. The CGI effects of the hospital and New New York with all the flying cars was very impressive. The first of the questions though: how could Chip (superbly played throughout by Sean Gallagher) tell that Rose was a pure blood human just from the picture transmitted from one of the spider robots? He himself did not seem to be terribly intelligent and so this information seems a bit of a leap for him. Arriving in the hospital, and my first thought was how similar the space looked to the museum in Dalek, the vast hall in The End of the World, and the levels on Platform One in The Long Game, Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways ... possibly because it was recorded at the same location?(This is an assumption, by the way, but the space does seem very familiar). Then we are into some nice comedy moments with the liquid disinfection in the lifts (question though: how could Rose continue to hear the Doctor after his lift door had closed and he was headed up?). Once the Doctor arrives in Ward 26, the mystery message seems to have been from the Face of Boe, who is apparently dying of old age, having lived for thousands, if not millions of years. He is being tended to by Novice Hame (Anna Hope) who was by far the best of the Cat Nuns - a superb piece of character acting which the series seems to excel at. Meanwhile Rose finds herself in the basement and encounters Cassandra (voiced by Zoe Wanamaker) and her cloned servant Chip. Now Cassandra claims to be the last human and has film of her attending a party with people in what seem to be very 20th Century clothes ... The presence of film seems to suggest around the 1970's or 1980's or it would have been video, as well as the styles at the party, which would make Cassandra considerably older than the Face of Boe ... but the Face was meant to be the oldest creature alive I thought (and didn't he have a baby as reported in The Long Game and yet here he seems to be the last of his kind - maybe I'm getting confused). There are some awesome lines here, with Rose referring to Chip as 'Gollum' and the 'So you're talking out your -' ... '- ask not' exchange between Rose and Cassandra. In short shrift, Cassandra uses a machine called a psychograft to take over Rose's body (she knows the term 'Chav' - a very 20th century expression. We could here also digress into why Cassandra is so horrified at this when she is in Rose's body as surely she would have known this beforehand, but we won't). Mention however must be given to Billie Piper as her performance as Rose/Cassandra is nothing short of inspired. She is totally convincing and very sexy and her kiss with the Doctor is a brilliant comic moment amonst several in this episode. Meanwhile we have discovered that the Cat Nuns have a secret ... people stashed in pods similar to those used by the Graske ... and that they are quite ruthless at destroying the people if they feel like it (though quite how a single lever on the wall incinerates just the one specific pod is unexplained.) The Doctor is starting to get suspicious, with diseases like Petrifold Regression, Marconi's Disease and Palidone Pancriosis being banded about and cured by the Cat Nuns and their mystery medicines. So the Doctor and Rose/Cassandra investigate and find themselves in the Nestene lair from Rose ... except this time it's banks of the pods all containing humans infected with every disease known in the galaxy. The Doctor realises that Rose is not Rose as she didn't care about the humans, and before we know it, the pods are opening and infected humans are on the rampage like something out of a George Romero film. But meanwhile we can ponder how Rose/Cassandra knew how to give them all a shot of adrenalin and how to open the pods (maybe it's by using the same multi-functional lever as before). But then one of the infected zombies shoves his arm in an electrical socket and every pod in the place opens ... what sort of a system is this! It's a wonder that the people had not escaped the last time there was a power failure. The CGI effects of the sickness spreading was surprisingly poor and on the Cats especially barely noticeable. But we're more concerned with Chip and his incredible ability to teleport. He gets left behind in the basement where he hides in a large empty drum ... and then he's amazingly in the isolation ward and hides in one of the pods ... but then he re-appears back in the wards ... an incredible talent to be sure. Unless there are actually many clones of Chip around ... After some bodyswapping shennanigans between Cassandra, Rose and the Doctor (what happened to the need for the psychograft machine? This seems to have been forgotten) the Doctor gets hold of all of the medicines and mixes them together, using the lifts' cleansing mechanisms to deliver the antidote to all the infected people. So ... let me get this right ... the Cat Nuns were keeping all these people as lab rats to test out cures and so on ... but when the Doctor mixes together all the cures, it cures in turn all of the lab rats ... so why were the Cat Nuns keeping them at all then? If they already had - in a single ward mind - the cures to every disease known available to them, then they surely have the best hospital going and there is no need to experiment any further. And in any case, since when does mixing all your medicines together in a vat and then spraying them over people actually work? Most of the medicines were in intravenous drip bags which suggests internal application through mixing them with the blood. What a strange and simplistic denoument. Despite the large suspension of disbelief needed here, the end play is excellent. The scenes of the Doctor bringing healing to everyone, and where he hugs the woman who has never been touched in her life are simply superb, and are very moving. But don't forget the plot ... the Doctor returns to see the Face of Boe who has woken up and isn't dying after all ... why was he in the hospital then and why did he call for the Doctor? But he delivers a cryptic message to the Doctor that they will meet for a third and final time and then he will deliver his message to the Doctor, before teleporting away somewhere else. You'd think he could figure out an easier way to tell the Doctor this ... Oh well. It all adds to the mystery and might be part of any ongoing theme or plot that this season has (aka Bad Wolf last year). As a coda, Cassandra ends up in Chip's body who then conveniently dies on her, but not before they have travelled back outside the hospital (doubtless avoiding all the NNCPD cops swarming everywhere) and back in time to that party where Cassandra was holding forth on the film. There Chip/Cassandra is the one who tells the human Cassandra that she is beautiful before dying at her feet. It's odd that Cassandra earlier recalled being told that she was beautiful, but not the messenger dying. Nor that he looked like her future cloned slave. Selective memory obviously. Overall I really enjoyed New Earth. I don't think it is perfect, but it's not at all bad. It's great fun and rattles along at a good pace, but if you scratch the surface then it starts to really not make a lot of sense. Billie Piper was brilliant as Cassandra, and David Tennant made a very watchable and entertaining Doctor. I do worry a little about the series plundering its own recent continuity quite so much (Cassandra, the spiders, the Face of Boe) but as long as they remember to try and keep it to the background then things will be fine. Next week we have a foray into Werewolves to look forward to, and reports suggest that this is one of the stronger episodes. Until then ...