catholiclefty

With the casting of Karen Gillan, I guess we have all the players in place for the next phase of Doctor Who. I think I've only just realised quite how much of a restart we're going for here - with a new Doctor and a new companion simultaneously, we're in reasonably uncharted territory. The only comparative really is Pertwee's season 7, which also had the colour novelty and was in many ways a different series entirely for a while, with the TARDIS out of action and everything taking place on Earth. And season 27 was after a 16 year gap (passing over Paul McGann for the time being, sorry Paul). So this is new and interesting and, with Steven Moffat in charge, you've got to hope for good things.

As for Ms Gillan, I have no opinion whatever as I don't believe I've seen her in anything (apart from her small appearance in 30.2 The Fires Of Pompeii, which I don't really recall). She looks very pretty in her promo pics though, which raises the far from unwelcome prospect of a companion who is actually rather fanciable. It's been a long long while. Lalla Ward's Romana, perhaps, being the last one?

I guess I should have faith in Mr Moffat, given he's so far given us both Sophia Myles and Carey Mulligan in guest roles. I'm willing to put his lack of attractive casting for the Library two-parter down to an aberration (River Song didn't do anything for me at all, I'm afraid). Normal service resumed now, one hopes :-)

Is it just me that thinks Karen Gillan looks quite a bit like a younger Sophia Myles, specifically a younger version of her Outlander character?

Unfortunately, we follow the decent The Next Doctor with the tedious and convoluted mess that is Planet Of The Dead. Rubbish title, rubbish episode, with lots of supporting characters, most of whom completely superfluous, a new alien race with insect heads who achieve nothing other than to enable David Tennant to over-act for a bit, some tedious UNIT techno-babble nonsense with a boring Welsh scientist stereotype, a potentially-decent but wasted new temporary companion in the form of Michelle Ryan, a lot of dubious ethics, a silly setting, and the distinct feeling that we've seen it all before. And much better.

And why go to Dubai to film it anyway? I've often criticised over-reliance on CGI in this series before, but this is a perfect example where CGI would have sufficed just as well.

The only thing that would have saved this would have been an appearance by the Brigadier - and when UNIT started getting involved, just for a second, I thought it may be possible. But, sadly, not.

Rather a disappointment this. Hopefully Tennant's upcoming swansong will be better than either this sort of pointlessness or the over-bearing Journey's End.

So, err, Matt Smith is the next Doctor. All around the country, those of us in our late twenties and early thirties suddenly felt quite a bit older, as we discover the next Doctor is actually going to be younger than us. Gah!

I've no idea if he'll be any good or not, we'll have to wait and see. I do wonder about the logic behind wanting an even younger Doctor than Tennant, I don't think it is the stylistic choice I'd have made, but then I can't write for toffee, and for now at least I still have a decent amount of confidence that Steven Moffat knows what he's doing...

The Christmas specials - it still feels nice to say that at all! - get back on form with The Next Doctor, a neat mix of mystery, running around, smashing things up, and neat little character pieces as we slowly reveal just who this character who appears to be a future regeneration of the Doctor actually is. There's lot of hints that you'll probably not pick up on at a first viewing - there's decent depth here, of both story and character, while also being rather good fun, and it breaks from what was quickly becoming an alarming tradition of the last couple of specials by not giving a one-shot companion who the Doctor ends up rather liking. The Cybermen are never exactly my favourite monsters, but I don't mind them here as they're pretty incidental to the character stuff going on.

Atmospheric, touching, and with a reasonably tight storyline, this is easily the best of the Christmas specials since the first, and far more consistently strong than that one (the first isn't exactly consistent all the way through, but the last 20 minutes make up for the all the uneven tone of the rest). Very good indeed.

This was a whole run of episodes that were all more or less good, but that in itself is rather damning with faint praise, because while that excludes any very weak episodes (of the Fear Her or Love and Monsters type) it also excludes any downright excellent episodes (of The Girl In The Fireplace, Human Nature or Blink type). Nothing in this season bored or annoyed me enough to want to never see the episode again - and yet nothing so interested and grabbed me enough that I've even bothered to keep it on video until the box set comes out.

David Tennant was decent enough for the most part, bar the usual occasional over-acting, but he wasn't allowed the kind of stretching role (which he fulfilled very well indeed) he got in Season 29's Human Nature. The problem with the Doctor is mostly not David Tennant's though - the role of the Doctor has become almost deified (yes, not as grotesquely as in Last of the Time Lords, but now it is almost a running theme). The fragility of Eccleston's Doctor and bemusement of Tennant's earlier period have been replaced by a narratively problematic omniscience. It's like later era Tom Baker, but not quite as much fun. Given that, the bursting of the omniscient bubble in Midnight was dramatically necessary, and the episode worked really rather well, but overall it would have been better if it had not been dramatically necessary in the first place.

Catherine Tate proved her acting chops very well, and the writing for her was almost uniformly excellent (better than for the Doctor). That doesn't excuse the terrible wasted opportunity of Donna, though. Firstly the 'reset' at the end of her character arc is a truly miserable way to deal with a character we've come to know and grow with over the course of a whole season. But even worse than that, the main reason I could see for a more mature companion who wouldn't go all lovey-dovey over the Doctor was to explore and develop the character of the Doctor, his foreign and alien nature, and despite positive signs of this in the first two or three episodes this eventually, criminally, went nowhere at all. Such a missed chance.

Not that everything used to be rosy in the garden. The return of Rose (and heaven forbid, her mother) just served to remind us that the Billie Piper days weren't all glorious either - although at least she used to be attractive, and didn't have odd problems with enunciating her words.

The return of Martha didn't really achieve anything of substance (the ending setup, that the Doctor militarises and dehumanises all those around him, doesn't hold up to an instant of logical thought, whatever the Doctor seems to have thought when Davros was ranting at him) and Freema seemed off compared to last series, too. Always good to see Liz Sladen again, even if she seems to have got very old, very suddenly - though again, couldn't she be given something concrete to actually do? Why let Torchwood intrude 'back' into the Doctor Who world - I don't watch Torchwood thanks, because whenever I've seen it it's been rubbish.

Which leads to the series arc as a whole - I'm not going to try to list the things that started and then went nowhere, else this entry will end up longer than my second review of Enchanted, and I want to do something else with my life today. But we get to the end and... well, it's just another invasion. A biggie, for sure, but I've almost stopped caring about earth being invaded by 7 zillion CGI daleks or cybermen or whoever. Davros' ranting is quite good, but doesn't stack up against Genesis of the Daleks for us old hands who remember it, even if the stakes are supposedly even higher.

Standalone episodes were ok, well after we get over 'Partners In Crime' with the silly 'fat' aliens. Moffat's library two-parter was decent enough, and was logically tied up as nicely as his other stories, but for whatever reason wasn't half as satisfying or enjoyable. (Perhaps it was the mysterious absence of fit women. He's usually very good at that - Sophia Myles, Carey Mulligan......) 'Midnight' was at least unusual enough to be intriguing, and is definitely Russell T's best episode of the season. The others... well, they were ok. Pretty good, even. But nothing special. I have no favourite episode this year, nothing at all stands head and shoulders above the rest. Neither do I have a least favourite (though if forced I'd say 'The Unicorn and the Wasp' was rather weak, and 'Partners In Crime' was probably the weakest).

This had a lot of potential, but sadly an awful lot of it was wasted. Series 29 was much better. Series 28 was about equal, but had 'The Girl In The Fireplace'. This series is probably about the same on average as the average episode in the (considerably more uneven, with big highs and big lows) Series 27. So a bit disappointing, especially as there isn't a full series next year. But then we've got Moffat, and despite being slightly disappointed this year, I await what he's going to give us with quite a lot of enthusiasm.

This episode is far too much like eating far too much of something you really like - superficially really satisfying and enjoyable, but once you've done it, you start to regret it.

On the positive side, as opposed to the finales of seasons 27, 28 and 29 - especially 29 - this was mostly enjoyable while being watched. It certainly didn't have the serious structural problems of Last of the Time Lords while still on the screen. But, once you give it more than a moment's thought - which you don't have time to do while it is going on, at least not until near the end, but once it is over you will - the plot-holes pile up, the inconsequential dead-ends of the story come to light, and many of the underlying rules of the program seem, if not altogether violated, rather battered. No big reset button, thank goodness, but still a number of basically non-sensical cul-de-sacs lead to a mostly non-sensical conclusion. I don't want to sound churlish - there is a place for all-action, adrenaline-fuelled Doctor Who, but it is rather a shame that it doesn't really stand up to retrospective inspection as well, in the way the best of Moffat's scripts (for example) manage.

David Tennant does what he mostly does - a 95% excellent performance, with about 5% of excessive over-acting which sadly detracts from the excellence of the other 95%. Catherine Tate was, again, pretty excellent - though with her story over, I'm more than a little disappointed that her character developed hugely over the series - to no ultimate avail - and the effect of her on the Doctor remained largely unexplored. If there was an argument for a Catherine Tate-style companion, it was to explore the effect *on the Doctor* of a different perspective, and we got little of that. More to be said there when I review the whole series, probably.

Billie Piper really isn't a quarter as attractive as she used to be, sadly, and had just about nothing to do beyond get a different ending from the 'final' one she got two years ago. Elisabeth Sladen seems to have aged more in the last 2 years than she did in the previous 30 :-/ and also ended up with nothing to do but tread water until the real resolution presented itself. Freema Agyeman didn't seem fully on form here, either, though she was burdened with one of the more obvious (and, in retrospect, rather irritating) plot cul-de-sacs. John Barrowman was fine, as was Noel Clarke, but again no-one had anywhere near enough to do that was in any way important to drive the plot along.

You can see what was trying to be done here, but at the end of the day quick talking, technobabble, unresolved plots, and an incredible amount of things going on, aren't substantive substitutes for a satisfying story. Earth invaded, again. Doctor saves the day, again. Whatever you think of the early Pertwee era (and I admit I'm quite the fan) it manages rather more variety than this - without leftfield and ultimately unsatisfying gimmicks like fake regenerations and kinda-copies of the Doctor. And for all the effects, and the admittedly mostly decent dialog, Davros doesn't seem one zillionth as menacing as he does way back in Genesis of the Daleks.

A worthy effort, and I won't deny it was fun, but we needed a much better story to cap off four years.

Well, this is just an incredible amount of fun. So much fun, and so quick-moving, that you forget all about the various problems with plot and motivation of the characters (which are present, but completely forgiveable when you're enjoying it this much). This is Russell T Davies Doctor Who to the extreme - and highly enjoyable.

I'll leave off a proper review until I've seen part 2, but the only thing I fear about part 2 is that whatever resolution we come to, it will be somewhat of a let-down given the setup (please, no big reset buttons this time). Still, what a setup!

This year's Doctor-less episode is no 'Blink', though fortunately it's certainly no 'Love and Monsters' either. It's a nice concept - even if hardly an original one - let's see what would have happened differently in the last couple of years if the Doctor hadn't been around.

The first half was tight, effective, and even quite gripping. Then it started to lose momentum a bit, push in heavy-handed (if probably accurate) messages about rubbish human beings (Russell T Davies seems to like that, perhaps a bit too much), and a final resolution that kinda worked and yet didn't seem quite satisfying enough, not least as it borrowed heavily from 'Father's Day' (speaking of which, where were the Reapers to start eating people because history has been changed?)

Catherine Tate was good - indeed, she has been good all season, and has been written for well, and yet... someone it just doesn't seem quite right for Doctor Who. Close, but not quite right. As for the return of Billie Piper - well, this was an odd performance. It was certainly disconcerting - if it were deliberate, then well done on her part - if it wasn't, then this was shockingly odd. She was much nicer looking with a little flesh on her bones, too, she's gotten too thin now. Oh well.

Onto the grand finale then, with apparently everyone and everything thrown in together. Which may be fun, or it may be terrible, or (like Last of the Time Lords last year) quite a bit of both...

Happily for me, this wasn't the third Saturday night in a row that I felt miserable. Instead, I really rather enjoyed this one, and it was just unnerving enough to work well. The balance - between all-too-human scared human beings laying blame in an irritatingly illogically human fashion, and an increasingly irritated Doctor finding himself in a situation where pomposity and big-headedness are a hindrance rather than a help - is a very welcome tack for the series to take in a one-off episode. It's not perfect - the resolution doesn't seem motivated well enough - but this is a well-written and intriguing episode. Very high marks to Russell T here for trying something different (and, given the general pomposity of Tennant's Doctor, quite welcome) and pulling it off successfully - and to David Tennant for a nice piece of acting. As a counterpoint to 'Voyage of the Damned' - Doctor, and random group of people, put together in a difficult situation - this is, eventually, more satisfying. And, actually, a little creepy too!

So, this will be the conclusion of Moffat's two-parter then. Was I feeling just as miserable as when I watched the first part? Irritatingly, yes. Were the storylines all wrapped up? Yes. In a satisfactory way? Err... kinda. It seemed to me to be a little too much high-concept sci-fi and not quite enjoyable enough. Yes, heaven forbid I should *complain* about that (!) but I think feeling miserable for both parts has seriously dented my enjoyment of this - but, that apart, I still don't think this is up to the (ludicrously high) standard of Moffat's other stories.

I don't think it helped that River Song didn't work for me somehow. Don't know why, there was nothing particularly wrong with the character or the acting, but somehow she didn't seem to fit correctly. And the rest of the characters were all a bit unimportant, really, and hard to care less which one was being killed off next. Catherine Tate was, again, fine - the writing for her has been spot-on all season, and while I still don't like her as a companion much, she has been realised very well by the writers and acted very well by Tate. Tennant was good here too, though I was finding it hard to care as much as perhaps I ought.

So, overall, this was competent, some good lines, some nice work, no obvious cheating, and yet it just didn't work properly for me, and so by a long way my least favourite of the Moffat episodes to date. I suppose I had to be a bit disappointed sooner or later, but it is still disappointing to be disappointed! (Season 4 of Coupling wasn't half as good as the previous years either. Maybe 4s are unlucky somehow :-)

Pretty difficult - and reasonably unfair - to sum up this one without seeing the second half, even leaving aside the fact that I wasn't in the best of health (hay-fever being more irritating than usual) at the time I watched it. A lot of it was very good indeed - the slow-paced start was very well done, and some of the subversion of expectation was neat. Conversely, a few bits felt like they didn't quite mesh correctly.

Still, it is hard to judge at this point. It didn't jump out of the screen shouting 'this is fantastic!' the way that Girl in the Fireplace or Blink did - but then I'm not convinced the first part of Empty Child/Doctor Dances did either, so I'll wait to see if it is all satisfactorily wrapped up (I'm sure it will all be wrapped up - this *is* Mr Moffat - but whether it is done in a good way or not, we shall see).

This one felt like filler and was, consequently, decidedly average. I have very little of consequence to say about it at all, so I'll say very little. It thought is was a little bit cleverer than it was, which is never good. So, quickly onto Moffat's two-parter. Forthwith! (well, not that forthwith, thanks to, err, Eurovision...)

News that will surprise few but delight many - Steven Moffat is taking over from Russell T Davies at the helm of Doctor Who. Yay!

Russell has done a darn good job - even allowing for my occasional issues with the quality of his scripts - as resurrecting a series dead for over 15 years and turning it into a huge success for a whole new generation, without alienating the fans who had been clamouring for a return for all that time, is quite an achievement indeed. Very well done!

But, if he wants to step down, is there be a better pair of hands to take it onward than Steven Moffat? Not in my opinion. This should be most interesting!

This was a rather enjoyable episode, only really marred by the nagging feeling that we'd seen this basic plot before rather too many times - a feeling justified by the ending borrowed almost directly from last year's finale.

Having said that, the daughter thing was well done (and yes, Georgia Moffat is pretty fit, as well as the nice touch of her being Peter Davison's daughter!) and can't have annoyed too many people, and the twist of the length of the war was pretty cunning (even if rather plot-hole-ridden on reflection).

David Tennant here seemed very good indeed for about 95% of the time, and surprisingly poorly acting for about 5%. Maybe I was just distracted by Georgia Moffett. (Actually, how many people called 'Moffat' or 'Moffatt' or 'Moffett' can we have involved in Doctor Who? It can't be that common a name, surely?!)

Decent, if combined a strong sense of deja vu and a sense that the concept of The Doctor's Daughter deserves more fleshing out. And a vague grumbling at the implication of a reasonably standard cloning machine being able to make Doctor-clones, which no doubt will never be mentioned again but is problematic.

Due to being on holiday, I saw these together (convenient for a two-parter, eh?) and so may as well review them together.

Very, very good. This is the first time this series that we've approached the great episodes of last year. There are a few problems - the science is wobbly, the character motivation is a bit off, some threads are left dangling, yes it is another super threat to Earth once more - but for the most part this is strongly acted, strongly premised, and a downright enjoyable romp all round. Everyone puts in a good performance - more toned-down, only over-the-top when necessary, far more season 29 than season 28 - seeing Martha again is fun (and having her get along well with Donna, rather than being bitchy, is a wise move), UNIT are back, and the Doctor gets the best in-joke line since 'Blink' with reference to the UNIT dating debate (well, it had me giggling for a good few minutes, at least!). The Sontarans are more-or-less true to their history, and it holds together tightly enough, despite the problems when you think about it afterwards, that this is thoroughly watchable and engrossing. More like this please.

It seems we have the Doctor's (very fit-looking!) daughter next week, which will no doubt divide fandom again - but given he's had a granddaughter since the very first episode 44 years ago, that doesn't seem all that shocking to me. We shall see.

Well, this was...ok. A bit heavy-handed with the slavery thing, and a bit odd all round, but it seemed like it worked while I was watching it, though now I'm a lot less sure. The main bad guy was a bit of a weak link really, he didn't convince at all, and Tennant is back to being a bit too OTT for my liking. Tate was fine - I'm starting to think the writers have a better handle on her than pretty much anyone else, which I suppose makes sense to some degree.

So, dunno really, certainly not a classic but not a turkey either. Good while you're immersed in it, but doesn't demand much thought or analysis.

Ah, ok, so this is the early-in-the-season go-back-to-a-historical-time episode. This is becoming as much of a staple as the not-very-good-first-episode or the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-final-episode or the oh-wonderful-Moffat-wrote-this-one-it-will-be-very-good episode. Still, if it works...

And, mostly, this one works. I'm not sure if the conceit of the family acting like a modern family works too well, and there are too many concepts thrown around to fully get a grip on what is going on - yes, there are nasty creatures, and they give some sort of psychic powers, and the Doctor has to go into the volcano, and blow it up in order to save the world, and... Yes, ok, but I'm not at all sure I follow the 'why' of much of it, and I'm not sure I want to expend the effort to work it out. Still, after a leisurely first 15 minutes, this drives forward with enough strength and momentum that, well, really those things don't matter. Tennant was better here than last week - still over-acting on occasion, but largely sensible - and Tate was really rather good, even her slipping into typical Catherine Tate-style-characterisation was both brief and reasonable given the story. And it has to be said that it is nice to have a companion who asks real 'why' questions, not about the monster of the week but about what the Doctor actually does and his morality. That could be very nice indeed if maintained and treated with a little care.

A lot more promising than last week then, and there is enough potential here for the remainder of the series to keep me interested. I'm now at the stage where I think they *can* pull off Donna successfully as a companion, though it remains to be seen if they do.

Everything is happening in the wrong order this year, and it is starting to confuse the heck out of me. The clocks went forward the wrong side of Easter, Easter itself was far too early, I've been getting up scarily early at weekends (for me, at least), I'm about to go on holiday which normally happens towards the end of the year rather than a third of the way through, and our work schedule has moved back a couple of months after being more or less stable for the last three years. And so I can't say that in this highly confused state I'm altogether prepared for the return of Doctor Who - but it is back, and so I'd better review it.

This, for good or ill, in the (re-)introduction of Donna, played by Catherine Tate, as companion. In an attempt to be even-handed, I have to say that I'm not a fan of Catherine Tate, and I didn't like much of her performance in The Runaway Bride. Conversely, it is fair to say that she is a good actress and can certainly do what is demanded of her - it's just unfortunate if that is the kind of OTT character she is best known for. Certainly her character here is far more subdued than in Runaway Bride, and much the better for it. In some scenes - especially the scene with Bernard Cribbins - she was really rather good and watchable. But rather more times than I'd have liked the excesses broke through. If they can be kept in check then the character could work out. Which, rather scarily, is also applicable to David Tennant, though you may have forgotten this after his mostly outstanding series last year. The Doctor and Donna could play off each other deeply horribly, as in most of Runaway Bride, or alternatively, if they keep it subtle and subdued, really quite well. Only time will tell. Still, you'll have to indulge one more moan from me that I'd like to have seen Sally Sparrow as companion, even if there's a lot of water passed under the bridge since I last said that.

So, for me, the jury is still out on Donna. The jury has, however, already passed a guilty verdict on Russell T Davies for an opening episode that, well, really wasn't that good at all. As ever, the plot-holes as wide as the Pacific Ocean are present, but this story just wasn't interesting enough to gloss over them. And, well, I can't really say I cared in the first place for the story, even without the plot-holes. I don't know how much they spend on CGI nowadays, but I wish it would be less. That's not what Doctor Who is about, either the old or the new series. It may be worth saying that it isn't just about Rose, either. Her appearance at the end is interesting, even intriguing, but I hope she isn't going to overshadow the series too much until she actually gets her episodes.

A disappointing start, though tempered by my general state of confusion and general uneasiness about Catherine Tate that stopped me looking forward too much to it in the first place. Highly average, and not really indicative (I hope) of how the season will pan out.

A new year, and a belated review of the by-now-customary Christmas special of Doctor Who (seriously, though, who'd have thought it a few years ago? Doctor Who as pretty much the star attraction on Christmas Day? Not that I'm complaining, mind).

Well, this was pretty good, it did what it did well, had some good characters in it (Clive Swift in particular is always worth watching), and Kylie Minogue was decent enough. It was hard not to think we'd seen most of it before - and as a Russell T Davies script, there were gaping plotholes - but it did the job a lot better than Catherine Tate's screaming last year managed. The theme of the lonely, tragic Doctor still probably has some mileage, although I'm starting to think that if they're not careful, they could overdo it a bit.

It was no 'Blink', but it wasn't a 'Love and Monsters' either. The middle-ranking of the three Christmas specials so far. And only a few months away from the new series - where, unfortunately, we get Catherine Tate. I will give her a darn good chance - and the role of companion is generally far less important than it often appears - but I still wish they'd got someone else in the role. Carey Mulligan perhaps? :-) (look, if I start wibbling on about Carey Mulligan again, I might stop wibbling on about Amy Adams for a few minutes. Although, based on the last week or so, probably not).

This was pretty enjoyable - good to see Peter Davison being the Doctor again, and a lot of good setup put in by our local writing God, more regularly known as Steven Moffat, which - canonically! - explains the different appearance of the TARDIS, the age problems in multi-Doctor stories, and some more information to muse over how time works in the Who Universe. Quite impressive for 7 minutes, really!

My only quibble - how does the Five Doctors work if later regenerations retain memory of events that previous regenerations have witnessed? Or is Gallifrey 'special' in some way? Or was this event 'special' in some way? Need to ponder this somewhat.

Conversely, other people have quibbled about the fact that the Time Lords still exist for Davison's Doctor, despite the Time War. I don't see how this is a quibble, really. I never thought the entire past lives of the Doctor had been changed by the Time War. But then, it still isn't clear how cause and effect works in this universe. Timey-Wimey-Wibbly-Wobbly is probably about as good an explanation as we can handle!