What a fantatic episode!!!

I loved the utter campness that ASH played Mr Finch. I loved the utter sillyness of how the aliens were seen off - the alarm bell was excellent and I couldn't stop laughing when Mickey 'pulled the plug' I loved the one-up-man-ship from Rose and Sarah Jane "Loch Ness Monster" "seriously?"

K9 was adorable and Tennant probably barely needed to act for his first scenes with Sarah Jane (In case you haven't heard Tennent has been a Who geek since he was 10 years old and he wrote a school essay about how he was addicted to the show and wanted to play the Doctor one day!)

I'm so glad that Mickey is getting to go off world. The actor is excellent an its great he's finally getting to shine.

Next week looks great with (at last) a bit of classic maiden in distress calling for the Doctor Though I wonder how they are going to work Torchwood in?

I missed the Baker/Pertwee era, but that didn't stop me enjoying this breakneck romp with a heart. Anthony Head was a great pantomime villain, and the way they used the returning Sarah Jane Smith as a catalyst for addressing the curse of the Doctor's immortality was very clever. Dealing with the human consequences of the Time Lord's time-hopping has been a recurring theme in the new series, and it's always interesting.

Serious stuff aside, as Micky's said in the episode's best line (never thought I'd find myself typing that, but I've been warming to the great lummox of late): "The missus and the ex, every man's worst nightmare." The banter between Rose and Sarah was great ("Lock Ness Monster." "Seriously?" ), as was the way everyone came together in the end.

Comedy and drama in equal measure, perfectly recipe; they even earned that uber-cheesy walk in the sunset at the end.

And how cool was that "so disco" K9?



(Edited by Byron 07/05/2006 00:24)

I had much love for this episode. Of all the companion's exits, Sarah-Jane's was one of the saddest - they parted on quite bad terms - so it was nice to see her get some closure. The bitching between S-J and Rose was very good and Mickey was smart enough to notice how redundant he's been up to now and try to fix it.

I keep getting hit on the head with anvils, though. They all have "Torchwood" written on them.

I actually tend to prefer the episodes that RTD doesn't write. Couldn't tell you why specifically, although I do think his plots lack substance.

How cool was the dialogue by the swimming pool? "I used to have lots of mercy..." *fangirl squee*

(Edited by Kate 30/04/2006 17:34)

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by Kate
I actually tend to prefer the episodes that RTD doesn't write. Couldn't tell you why specifically, although I do think his plots lack substance.

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I find other writers a lot more consistent. All the episodes I disliked last year were penned by Mr Davis. His biggest problems are shoehorning in inappropriate OTT humour and over-reliance on clunky deux ex machina endings. (Sorry mate, "The Parting of the Ways" was a superb episode on all other scores, but, even though you made it work, that heart-of-the-Tardis device was a big honking cop-out.)

But when he's good, he's very good. I enjoyed last week's "Tooth and Claw" a lot more than this week's installment (good as it was). Great with dialogue. Just hope he follows a reverse course to idol Joss Whedon in the "writing a coherent plot" department. (Judging by the very clever ending last week he just might.)

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How cool was the dialogue by the swimming pool? "I used to have lots of mercy..." *fangirl squee*

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I'll take you that and raise you the "temptation of Tennant" speech in the comp room. Fantastic!

GREAT opening!

Although there was a definite high bodycount in terms of random passers-by, wholesale slaughter and implied deaths off-screen, last series was largely reluctant to portray anything as not being able to be fixed by the Good Guys â„¢ by the end.

And you never do anything permanently nasty to children. Not at 7pm on a Saturday evening on BBC1.

BBFC 12 rating or not, the target demographic was broadened to the point where the BBC web site ran an children's advisory rating for each episode and rated to the level of five year olds.

So actually getting to see a school age child killed in isolation before the opening credits'd even rolled - in a way that very obviously wasn't offering any comeback - was something that I wasn't expecting.

(It's a pity that the BBC'd already announced their second attempt at a K-9 spin-off series within the last few days, because that taboo-breaker for a first scene really did blow the usual feeling of safety wide open. Without that announcement - particularly with the whole theme of loss of the past running through the episode - the finale could've packed a lot more punch.)

So it was a real shame that, despite having plenty of interesting components, the episode that followed didn't really live up to it for me.

It's not that I couldn't appreciate what was being done. The human story was very powerful, and it was addressing an aspect of traveling with the Doctor that hadn't really been explored.

Seeing both the Doctor and Rose have a sudden dose of reality about where their carefree little existence was ultimately going to go was powerful stuff.

Although this episode managed the impressive feat of making me feel genuine sympathy for Rose and her cosy assumptions (I wonder if she'll start to understand how Mickey probably feels by the end of the series), it was easy to sympathise with either character by the end.

But unlike Boom Town, when the heavy character interaction was supported by some strong plot that was moving the series along, the alien plot just seemed to take second place to something else - and as with last week, the whole plot exposition and resolution just seemed to be tacked onto the end.

(This felt more like the opening episode to a multi-parter than something that should've been squeezed. This series needs more arcs!)

Which was a pity when there was a villain like Tony Head in the mix. As a clash of screen presences, it was rather impressive seeing him and Tennant face off.

Personally, I thought that Sarah-Jane having to yank him back from the temptation of fixing everything by facing her own denial was a little cliché when he's generally been able to resist taking the dictatorial route on his own - but there's been so much emphasis on the Doctor's inhuman qualities and soul-searching recently that maybe it worked. It's iinteresting to see such a powerful character so vulnerable when it comes to something so intrinsically human as the concept of mortality - something that really drives home what he is under all of the pop culture references.

Speaking of which: there'd better be a good explanation for all of this Torchwood stuff by the end of the series, because - intrigued though I may be - I want to watch Doctor Who, not a thirteen week advertising campaign for something else.

Particularly when last series largely ignored it in favour of the completely enigmatic Bad Wolf (although for me, "Rose ex machina" was more of a case of the pay-off not living up to the hype than the other way around), the amount of frantic ret-con that seems to be going on just doesn't seem to fit.

And as much as I found some of the almost slapstick cat-fighting by Rose and Sarah-Jane cute, was I the only one who found RTD's instruction to "write it like Sex and the City" (detailed in Confidential a little galling?

I wouldn't have thought that there'd be a great crossover between the two audiences - although maybe that's just me.