Doctor Doctor

Let's talk about Doctor Who again. Well, I haven't done anything else today, so we might as well. And what with last weekend's excitement, I only got to watch last Saturday's episode yesterday, so I've had two in two days and I thought I'd share my thoughts on them.

"The Poison Sky", the second part of the Sontaran story, was a real rip-roaring, thrilling episode, with no end of action and entertainment. I looked at the clock half an hour in to it and thought "Cripes, we've had at least two movies' worth of things happening so far and it doesn't even feel rushed!" Great writing, and mostly great acting too. It's always fun to see Rupert Holliday Evans, and I hope he shows up again, he works well with the Doctor.

It was also a very good episode for a New Doctor Who Drinking Game - it ticked all the boxes for the plot cliches that keep on showing up. We had modern technology in the form of GPS systems and cars turning against humans; the entire world coming under attack at once with maps displaying affected areas and British and American news reporters commenting on it; the companion's mother being at odds with the Doctor's approach to solving the problem; the Doctor being briefly separated from the Tardis and lamenting that he was going to have to live like a normal person now; a whiny American genius bad guy... but despite all this, it was fantastically fun to watch. The Sontarans were great, so were Martha and Donna and the Doctor, and the plot made some kind of sense too. Only the final resolution was a bit flawed - okay, hindsight is always 20-20, but I bet the Sontarans were really kicking themselves about the way they didn't bother to go after Rattigan and kill him, even though they knew he had a device that could thwart all their plans.

Some really great moments from the Doctor ("People with guns are usually the bad guys"), and I hope we're going to see the Sontarans and UNIT again.

Tonight's episode, "The Doctor's Daughter", on the other hand, I think suffered from being a single episode. It had the kind of plot that would have worked spread over four 25-minute episodes, using as it did the old sci-fi cliche of a war between two factions that's been going on so long nobody remembers how it started (with a nice and very Doctor Who twist that I genuinely didn't see coming). It would have gone down very nicely in the Tom Baker era, and not just because of the similarities to "The Face Of Evil", but it felt like the pacing had been compromised to fit all the action into 35 minutes (with the final ten minutes being a lengthy epilogue). It felt rushed and disjointed, although it did avoid clunky exposition in setting the scene nicely.

I take issue with a couple of details of this society of people bred for the sole purpose of fighting the war and discovering the holy grail they've been searching for all their lives - firstly, having decided that the Doctor and Donna are threats to their society and of no genetic use to them, why do they lock them in a cell rather than just killing them? And why, having discovered the map to the thing their entire lives revolve around finding, do they decide to go to bed and set out to find it in the morning? I mean, I know a good night's sleep is important, but I'm surprised at the patience they're showing here.

Still, it was a good story, introduced an interesting character (although the silly handsprings-through-the-lasers bit is so not what Doctor Who is all about), making intelligent use of sci-fi staples (great costumes on the Hath too). It was just a bit bland and ordinary.

Still, I'm loving new Doctor Who, even half way through the fourth series. David Tennant needs to stay in the role for the rest of time. Best Doctor ever.