Gavin WintersThe bit where the Angel suddenly appears in the room, just as Sally and Larry have finished looking at the Doctor’s message, is the only moment in the entire history of #DoctorWho that genuinely made me jump…
…slightly.
…just a tiny bit, okay? 😜
Utopia: the season 3 Saxon story arc is one of the most well-crafted in RTD’s first run, if not the whole of the modern series. And it all starts to come together beautifully in these last few episodes, with links back to events throughout the season. #DoctorWho
Ten, Martha and Jack make an unexpectedly great TARDIS team, and I wish we’d had them for longer.
Well, after several episodes with not a peep about her, we have to get discussion of Rose again. 😜 Unfortunately necessary I suppose, to explain Jack’s immortality. #DoctorWho
Martha trying to play it cool after drawing Yana’s attention to the fobwatch. #DoctorWho
He’s right there! Stood next to you! Why didn’t he react to hearing that? 😄 #DoctorWho
Everything builds frenetically to that absolute blockbuster of a cliffhanger, one of #DoctorWho’s all time best. Stuck facing certain death at the end of time, while the Master’s back and has nicked the TARDIS. The ultimate “How the hell do they get out of that??” #DoctorWho
The Sound Of Drums / Last Of The Time Lords: …well, they escaped pretty easily as it turns out! I recall a bit of moaning about the convenience of that at the time, but what do people expect? No need to waste any more time in the far-future, get to the main action. #DoctorWho
I love Simm’s Master now, but was very unsure at the time. After the madness of Ainley and Roberts, fans had collectively started to believe we’d now get a return to a more Delgado-like portrayal, but RTD totally wrongfooted us by actually making him crazier than ever. #DoctorWho
The way he appears silently in a doorway echoes how the Ninth Doctor would do the same in season one.
And so does the return of RTD’s favourite - the ‘triple gag’ of the Master and Lucy Saxon repeatedly opening and closing the door to hear Vivienne Rook’s screams. #DoctorWho
Russell was trolling the vile old cow by getting her to do this, wasn’t he? Depicting her aligning herself with the most evil man in the universe… #DoctorWho
Finally getting to see a flashback of Gallifrey and the Time Lords was just magical. At long last we got to see it the way it had always been imagined - the huge citadel under a glass dome and all. #DoctorWho
The reveal that the Doctor whispered “use the countdown” to Martha is a slight cheat really, how would he know there was going to be one?
Also, the idea that the Master carved his face into Mt Rushmore is quite funny, since it’s literally what Trump wanted to do… 😆 #DoctorWho
The red herring of having some ultimate weapon, in this case the gun that can kill a Time Lord, is a type of plot device RTD will return to for the season 4 finale. #DoctorWho
A transformation scene in which Tennant’s clothes are magically restored around him? Well, let’s hope nothing as silly as that ever happens again… 👀#DoctorWho
So long for now Martha, the best RTD companion (I will brook no argument on this), who got the best exit by it being on her own terms.
If only they hadn’t fatally undermined her from the start with the constant unfavourable comparisons to she-who-must-not-be-named…🙄 #DoctorWho
I don’t think any minisode was as eagerly anticipated as this one. RTD’s era was always so cautious about gradually introducing stuff from the past but finally, an actual old-school Doctor in the modern series. #DoctorWho
Voyage Of The Damned: this is lots of fun but of all the Xmas specials this feels the most like it was written to be watched in a post-Christmas-dinner stupor, not needing much of your attention on the screen to follow the relatively straightforward plot. #DoctorWho
It’s The Robots Of Death meets The Poseidon Adventure really, isn’t it? The influence of the former is never more obvious than in the sequence where the Host gets its hand caught in the door and then chopped off. #DoctorWho
The supporting cast in this story are a very good example of how RTD always has a great knack of making you really get to know and care for characters, with just a few simple moments sketching in their personality and backgrounds. #DoctorWho
The Doctor’s big speech about being a Time Lord, 903 years old, etc, plus the later bit where Astrid kisses him, (both with conveniently timed sparks going off in the background) are very obviously written to be ‘trailer moments’ rather than being strictly necessary. #DoctorWho
There are some plot contortions where logic’s a bit stretched, like Geoffrey Palmer’s Captain happy to kill his crew because they’re ‘old sea dogs’ (what about all the fairly young passengers?)
And did Max Capricorn really have to be aboard the ship when it crashes? #DoctorWho
Oh, and just one other thing… Wilf! 😃 #DoctorWho
Partners In Crime: it’s a fairly slim plot (ba-dum-tish!) but it’s carried along by the sheer entertainment value of the Doctor and Donna’s reunion, plus all the near-misses beforehand. I don’t think RTD ever tried so hard to make an episode as funny as he did here. #DoctorWho
The windows scene alone, leading to the miming and the eventual interruption by Miss Foster, remains one of the most laugh-out-loud things Russell’s ever written. #DoctorWho
And call me a monster if you will, but the Adipose getting splatted by the taxi also never fails to make me laugh…🤭😈
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Miss Foster falling to her death could only be more cartoon-like if they had her glasses remain floating in the air for a couple of seconds after she fell before following her. #DoctorWho
As ambivalent as I was about Rose coming back, fair play to RTD for keeping that extra little scene a secret. Literally no one knew about it. #DoctorWho
The Fires Of Pompeii: this has a very lavish look to it, both in the studio and the location filming in Rome, and the full Pyrovile creatures represent another step forward in terms of what the show can do with CGI. #DoctorWho
The ‘competitive soothsaying’ scene is very well directed as it builds in intensity, and introduces two bits of this year’s story arc - “she is returning” and “there is something on your back”. #DoctorWho
Donna’s disagreement with the Doctor over the rights and wrongs of changing history is the best attempt to deal with this issue since the First Doctor and Barbara in The Aztecs. #DoctorWho
Of course it’s impossible to watch this now and not get a sort of temporal whiplash due to the presence of Peter Capaldi and Karen Gillan… 🫨 #DoctorWho
Planet Of The Ood: there’s a lot here that brings to mind stories from the 1970s, like the ‘future empire’ setting, the filming in a factory/industrial location, and the exploited indigenous natives that the Doctor needs to set free. #DoctorWho
One defining characteristic of Donna you always notice is how she won’t take any of the Doctor’s crap, like the way she instantly snaps back here at his cheap jibe about “who makes your clothes”. I’m not sure Rose or Martha would have been confident enough to do that. #DoctorWho
The CGI for the big purple brain thing is only *slightly* more convincing than the physical prop they used back in Time And The Rani! #DoctorWho
I feel sorry for the scientist guy who’s been secretly working (for ten years!) to bring down the company from the inside and free the Ood, then gets killed seconds before he’s achieved it… and the Doctor takes all the bloody credit by flicking a couple of switches! #DoctorWho
In fact there’s a general ’Raiders Of The Lost Ark’ problem here of the main protagonist not actually doing anything that affects the plot. Everything would have happened the same without the Doctor, just Ood Sigma would have presumably thrown the switch at the end. #DoctorWho
The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky: time for the perpetual ‘Big Bad No. 3’ to make their New Series debut. The blue armour looks a bit CBBC but otherwise it’s a good update.
And it wouldn’t be a Sontaran story without the traditional reveal via a helmet removal. #DoctorWho
That truck that UNIT are using as their mobile HQ is clearly bigger on the inside… 👀 #DoctorWho
God, Bernard Cribbins was just brilliant in every scene he was ever in, wasn’t he? #DoctorWho
So… you’re telling me these Sontarans can make perfectly accurate clones of Freema Agyeman…? 🤔 #DoctorWho
Rattigan’s an uncomfortably believable depiction of what certain tech billionaires we could mention were probably like as teenagers…
And like so many others in #DoctorWho who allied with Daleks, Cybermen, etc, the idiot ends up dead. Though at least in a noble self-sacrifice.
*Me in 2008 watching the first battle between UNIT and the Sontarans*
God, poor UNIT. They’re getting slaughtered.
*Me watching the second battle where they could shoot back*
YES! FINALLY!! WE’VE WAITED 40 YEARS FOR THIS! GO ON UNIT! FUCKING MURDER THEM!!! 🤬
The Doctor’s Daughter: a middle-of-the-road episode, enlivened slightly by the promise of the title - that we might see another Time Lord. And a relative of the Doctor, no less. Tennant plays the emotional range of his response to this development very well. #DoctorWho
Less welcome is more of his angry shouty acting, like when he’s yelling about “A man who never would!” at the end here. It’s an aspect of his performance that reeeeally hasn’t aged well. #DoctorWho
Poor Martha gets such a raw deal here. She’s only in it to be hived off into the side-story about the Hath.
And then they have her be a terrible medical doctor when Jenny is shot, instantly declaring there’s no hope and not bothering to do anything to try to save her. #DoctorWho
It’s a bit of a cliche in sci-fi that if you introduce a game changing element like Jenny, they *must* be killed off at the end, just to restore the status quo. But at least (at Moffat’s suggestion) they revived her. Shame she hasn’t returned since. Maybe in RTD2? #DoctorWho
tardis.guide@gavinwinters I was just about to say - what about #BigFinish ?!
The Unicorn And The Wasp: I think enjoyment of this one depends on your interest in/knowledge of the work of Agatha Christie. Not being hugely familiar with it myself, (beyond the Cluedo-like cliches) most of the references to book titles, etc, were lost on me. 🤷🏻♂️#DoctorWho
There are at least lots of funny bits, such as the flashbacks where everyone’s lying about what they were up to. Or the scene where they all emerge from their rooms in response to the Doctor’s call… with the butler belatedly poking his head out of the son’s room… 😄 #DoctorWho
But they’re also just repeating the whole routine from The Shakespeare Code of the historical author hearing mentions of works they’ve not written yet. It’s not as good as that episode, or The Unquiet Dead, which also gets a nod. #DoctorWho
All in all the whole convoluted story of the Vespiform and how it gets Agatha’s books imprinted on its mind (?) just seems like nothing more than an incredibly long-winded way of explaining why one of her book covers apparently had a huge bloody wasp on it. 🫤 #DoctorWho
Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead: a great pre-credits teaser, which immediately hooks you in with the mystery, and from there everything is gradually revealed and explained at exactly the right pace. This almost equals Blink as Moffat’s best story under RTD. #DoctorWho
“Hello Sweetie!”
River is noticeably much calmer here in her first (last?) appearance, not so much the outrageous ‘could-out-flirt-Captain-Jack’ whirlwind of a character she later becomes. #DoctorWho
Everything about this now feels like a forerunner of the imminent Moffat era, and especially all the hints about the future from River carry a lot more weight and meaning now we’ve seen her full story. #DoctorWho
It’s a bit daft that, having established the idea of keeping out of the shadows, not crossing them, etc… *everyone* starts wandering through clusters of shadow all the bloody time. #DoctorWho
Lots of familiar Moffat tropes on display here… a repeated phrase… a sound or image appearing subtly in the background before you realise its significance… but also the first appearance of “the Doctor quotes his own notoriety to get out of a tricky situation” #DoctorWho
Its overused in the years to come, but even this first example is a bit silly, telling the Vashta Nerada to “look him up”.
What if they did, but still kept coming? What would he do? What could he *actually* do to stop them?? Always feel it’s a bit of a lazy get-out. #DoctorWho
Love the fake ending of the Doctor and Donna walking away, before he sprints back to get the screwdriver and the subsequent mad dash to save River. Another triumphant “everybody lives” ending from Moffat. #DoctorWho
Midnight: a masterpiece from RTD, a horrible exploration of the worst excesses of humans when paranoid and terrified.
And credit to the director and sound editors too, for their achievements in getting the whole concept of this mysterious creature on to the screen. #DoctorWho
Neil Corry@gavinwinters You’re right, but it works as humour too, because the Vashta Nerada arrived in the books.
Cris ☄️@gavinwinters the way he managed to express pure emotion every screentime second he had... his performance was unforgettable.