The Racnoss Queen is such a crazy character, with her peculiarly mannered way of speaking and a seeming fascination with Christmas, weddings, etc.

And the creature itself looks great, just a shame they couldn’t stretch to a single CGI shot of her scuttling about. #DoctorWho

Smith And Jones: I love the confidence of how this opens. The question the media always asked in season 1 was “Can #DoctorWho work for modern audiences?” With season 2 it was “Can it work again, with a new Doctor?” But by now it’s like ‘Screw you, we’re a success and we know it!’
It’s a brilliantly economic bit of writing from RTD that in the first sixty seconds we get to know Martha and all her family, even down to the Dad’s new girlfriend, and immediately understand the dynamics between them all. #DoctorWho

“Where are they from, the planet Zovirax?”

The single most dated reference in all of #DoctorWho! 😄

Only in this show could the monstrous alien villain be little old Anne Reid in a nightdress, threatening people with a bendy straw. #DoctorWho

Martha gets one of my favourite ‘bigger on the inside’ moments, with the Doctor mouthing it along with her.

Welcome aboard, Miss Jones! 😀 #DoctorWho

The Shakespeare Code: you get a slight sense of the show expanding its visual capacity around this point, with the repeated CGI shots of medieval London. Even adding some tiny CGI people running about near the end. Just makes the scale a little grander. #DoctorWho
There’s still a tiny lingering worry that kids may not connect with an historical episode, so you get the Doctor’s quick summary of how “similar” everything is to the modern world - ‘recycling… global warming’, etc. #DoctorWho

They literally do the “there was only one bed” thing from fanfiction. 😄

Honestly Doctor, Freema Agyeman in bed next to you, looking longingly… and you go and ruin the moment blathering about bloody Rose…

You idiot! #DoctorWho

“Oh, 57 academics just punched the air!”

There it is - Russel’s favourite number! Is that the first time it was used in dialogue? #DoctorWho

To be honest, the technobabble (or bafflegab) explanation of how exactly the Carrionite technology works is a bit weak. It’s really just an excuse to have a fantasy concept like witches in #DoctorWho’s sci-fi universe. Best not to think about it too much and just enjoy the story.
Gridlock: always loved this one, definitely the best of the loosely-connected ‘New Earth’ trilogy. Very inventive how they just redress the same set for all the cars, but done so well you don’t really notice. And with such a crazy variety of different characters. #DoctorWho
Random Macra cameo! I suppose there is a thematic connection to their original appearance, with everyone refusing to accept their existence. #DoctorWho
One thing that RTD sometimes went slightly overboard with is having other characters becoming instantly besotted with the Doctor and start eulogising him. Brannigan’s known him about five minutes before breathlessly talking about how he’s “a little bit magnificent!” #DoctorWho
Tennant’s talk with Martha at the end, with his teary-eyed description of Gallifrey, is some of the best acting he’s done in the show so far. #DoctorWho
And it made this old fan very happy with the callback to Susan’s description of ‘silver leaves on the trees’…🥲 #DoctorWho
Daleks In Manhattan/ Evolution Of The Daleks: the first slightly iffy Dalek story of the modern run. Apparently RTD fell ill during production and it had to be completed without his oversight, and it shows. #DoctorWho
Where would time travellers be without random discarded newspapers to tell them what year they’ve arrived in? #DoctorWho
I’m sure fans of, er… certain niche adult entertainment were pleased with the design of this character… 👀 #DoctorWho
I know Talllulah is supposed to be a bit ditzy, but does it really take her that long to recognise Lazlo? Surely she’d recognise his voice straight away? #DoctorWho
I love the moment of the two gossipy Daleks, talking about Dalek Sec, with one checking behind him first to make sure they’re not being overheard. #DoctorWho

The bit about “Time Lord DNA” being conveyed down the lighting strike (?) is the point where the plot feels like its unravelling.

And the scene of the Doctor saving Lazlo seems rushed and almost improvised, sort of “oh, just do what you can with the available props.” #DoctorWho

The Lazarus Experiment: there was often a bit of a mid-season slump in the RTD years, and never more obviously than in season 3. There’s nothing too terrible here, there’s just much better episodes coming soon.

Still, a whole episode without a mention of Rose. Result! #DoctorWho

Hmm, so you conduct a dangerous and untested scientific experiment, in a huge spinning machine thingy… slap bang in the middle of a party with people having drinks and nibbles? Health & Safety nightmare! #DoctorWho
Tish comes across as incredibly shallow considering she was repulsed by Lazarus when he was a lecherous old man, but is suddenly all over him once he becomes younger. #DoctorWho

The CGI for the creature is generally very good and holds up well… except for the human face. 🫤

On DW:Confidential the CGI artists proudly talked about how they’d managed to get Mark Gatiss’ features in there. Er, really…? #DoctorWho

The Saxon story arc is ticking away nicely in the background. It’s worked into the season much better than Bad Wolf or Torchwood ever were, which were just… words being mentioned.

So who was this guy and what did he whisper to Francine to make her go so mad? #DoctorWho

42: I recall there being some very daft criticisms of this one, mainly people claiming that it was “exactly the same!” as Impossible Planet/Satan Pit from the previous year.

What, just because you can’t see past the grimy industrial aesthetic? #DoctorWho

Also fans grumbled because they thought it was our sun that’s revealed as a living entity, when its actually far across space.

Like the later ideas of ‘the Statue of Liberty’s a Weeping Angel’/‘the moon’s an egg’. People can’t cope when this stuff’s too close to home. #DoctorWho

The doors having been reprogrammed to only open by answering trivia questions is a bit of a silly contrivance to string things out a bit longer. There was possibly a less convoluted way of having that happen. #DoctorWho
Nooo, don’t kill Rosa Parks! #DoctorWho

The space sequences are all extremely well done. From Martha and Riley floating away in the escape pod, to the Doctor’s rescue attempt, to McDonnell’s sacrifice.

We’ve come a long way from Pertwee on very obvious wires in Frontier In Space! #DoctorWho

Tennant is very good at being possessed by the entity too, leading to a rare confession from the Doctor of being scared.

A decent, if not Earth-shattering debut from Chibnall. 🙂 #DoctorWho

Human Nature / The Family Of Blood: this was the beginning of a stormingly good sequence of episodes from here to the finale, maybe the best run in the entire history of the show?

How are there two versions of this story, given the novel? Ah, the Time War changed it. #DoctorWho

There’s a simplicity to most of the FX work here, as if they decided that too much flashy CGI would intrude upon this particular story. It recalls the ingenuity of the 1970s - nearly everything to do with the alien Family is represented by just a bit of green light. #DoctorWho
Tweed jacket and a bow tie? It’ll never work, Doctor… #DoctorWho
Tennant rises to the acting challenge of portraying the two distinct characters, and there’s a brilliant bit of subtlety in the scene in the spaceship at the end, when he has to do ‘The-Doctor-playing-John-Smith-but-not-as-good-as-David-Tennant-plays-him’ acting. #DoctorWho
The fates he inflicts on the Family are a rare glimpse of what the show often hints at, but we only occasionally see, of the Doctor being an unstoppable godlike force of nature, almost unfathomable to us mere mortals. #DoctorWho
But the most powerful moment is left for when Joan rightly questions him over whether anyone would have died if he hadn’t come here “on a whim”, for which he of course has no answer… #DoctorWho
Blink: as Moffat himself said, the Weeping Angels are a ‘movie-level’ quality of idea. We should be very grateful we got such a fantastic concept in #DoctorWho instead. The impact of this episode meant a return was inevitable, but I doubt their debut can ever be bettered.

@gavinwinters Agreed, they were a fantastic one off villain who feel like they've been watered down with every repeat appearance.

Ever since I saw Blink I always wished that this had been the pilot episode to brink the series back; it really feels like it was written with that in mind. All the mystery over who the doctor is, finding the TARDIS, all the little hints...Maybe a bit too ballsy for them to try though.