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This was basically a “Donna-lite” episode, and followed the Doctor as he went on a sort of bus trip across the planet Midnight.

I had zero memory of Midnight, so this is an episode I had completely forgotten about over the years.

The plot reminded me of something like 12 Angry Men, but with the passengers getting hysterical and siding against each other.  It is very much about fear and group thinking.  The monster is some entity that possesses one of the passengers and begins copying what others say, before saying things in sync with the others, and then finally saying things before them.  It eventually zeroes in on the Doctor and starts copying him specifically, leaving him in a catatonic copycat state.

What bothered me about the episode was that it had a lot of people yelling and talking over each other.  I don’t particularly like crowds talking around me in person, so it’s funny that I’m watching something to entertain myself and it has crowds talking.  I get where the episode was a little frightening, and it did seem like the Doctor was in a real vulnerable state and there was a sense of danger towards the end.  I still didn’t like the episode as much as many of the others I’ve been rewatching.

I also don’t get the strategy of the creature, since it apparently finds a way to disconnect the driver and mechanic from the front of the rover and kill them, then it bashes the wall and comes through somehow to possess someone, and just messes with all of the passengers the rest of the episode.  It went from overkill to toying with everyone.

I will say that Midnight looked cool every time they showed it.  I’m not really sure why anyone would want to visit such a place with no oxygen outside though.

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@dentarthurdent I always used to assume the Doctor and River met in reverse orders, but I’m wondering if it’s not completely in any specific order.  I mean if it was, she should have been given the sonic screwdriver like the next time they met.

I guess my memory of Eleven’s run is still from too long ago,  and I never really saw all of Twelve.  I know Eleven meets River as a child and that was most certainly out of order.

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There is a lot to unpack with Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead.  I finally reached these milestones on my rewatch, and now I will attempt to give my thoughts on them.

So in the future there is this world that is literally one big library, filled with physical books but also containing them in digital form, downloaded to a massive hard drive at the center of the planet.  As we find out in the story, the library was initially built for a dying little girl named Cal, whose family spared no expense to give her access to unlimited books to read in her afterlife.

Cal is the mind of the library’s core, and “saved” over 4000 people who were in danger in the library, uploading their consciousness to the hard drive.  From Cal’s perspective, however, it seems like the hard drive is her real life, and the library is something she keeps seeing in her dreams.

The Doctor and Donna quickly discover that something went wrong at the library.  But they’re soon joined by a group of astro-suit-clad people who are explorers.  One of them is River Song, in her first appearance in the series.  Another is Strackman Lux, a man whose family built the library for Cal.  I feel like the episode never gives the best reasoning for why River Song or the others came to the library, other than River Song called on the Doctor to meet her there.

The monster in the episode is the Vashta Nerada, microscopic swarms that hide in shadows, and latch onto people who get too close.  Though we can’t actually “see” them, the vashta nerada is a completely frightening creature because it can kill in seconds and leave behind bones and shredded spacesuits.  It’s made even more horrid by the spacesuits’ communicator device, which allows the fading consciousness of the deceased to continue talking a few moments after death.  And the lights going out around the library.

Much of the episode has some pretty good dialogue, with River Song trying to say how she knows the Doctor without actually spoiling too much, and also the group racing around and trying to figure out if each new room is safe from the vashta nerada.  River Song has her own sonic screwdriver, which she says was given to her by the Doctor in his future.  She also has a gun that lets her punch holes in walls which seemed pretty useful.

About midway through the episode the Doctor tries to teleport Donna to the TARDIS, but she never completes the teleporting and is instead saved by Cal to the hard drive.  What follows is Donna living a dreamlike life within the virtual town in the hard drive, going on a date, getting married, and having kids with a man with a speech impediment.  It was just weird and funny enough to be sweet.

Meanwhile the vashta nerada kill off just about everyone in the explorer party, until it’s down to the Doctor, River Song and Lux.  The dead characters in their spacesuits are animated by the swarms and continue moving and chasing after the survivors.  The Doctor eventually gets the monsters to communicate with him over the suits’ communicators and learns that the vashta nerada took over the library because their forests were chopped down to make so many books, and the library is essentially their new forest.

River Song has a hard time getting the Doctor’s trust, but is finally able to by whispering his true name into his ear.

Cal is seen speaking with a character in the digital world called Dr. Moon.  Moon seems to be acting as some sort of psychologist for Cal, and also checks up on her at home and in other places in the digital world.  Cal also greets Donna when she comes to the digital world.  He tells Cal that it is up to her to save everyone, and that the library is the real world while the town is the dream one.  Lux explains to the Doctor in the library and explains that Doctor Moon is the antivirus software for the library, a moon that appears in its skies.  More on Dr. Moon in a bit.

So it gets confusing here but there is a countdown timer in the library, and Cal is having trouble saving everyone – maybe she has run out of sufficient memory, or something.  I’m not sure if it is clearly stated what is going on.  The Doctor reasons with the vashta nerada in a pretty epic scene and asks them to back off so his team can survive and leave, and he’s forced to point out at there are so many books in the library that they can read up on who the Doctor is and what he’s done, leading them to withdraw and give the Doctor one night to get everyone out of the library.

The Doctor attempts to sacrifice himself to give Cal more system resources or memory to help salvage the saved people from the hard drive, including Donna.  River Song isn’t having it and takes up the task herself, sacrificing herself and bringing back over 4000 people to the library.  The episode ends with the Doctor realizing he gave River the sonic screwdriver because it contained her consciousness, and rushing it back down to Cal so she can be saved and live in the dream world.

And the scene with the Doctor snapping his fingers to open and close the TARDIS doors was just awesome.

So a qualm I have with this episode is, all of River’s friends who died were saved, so wouldn’t River have also been saved anyway?  I guess I am truly confused about that point.

Doctor Moon is an interesting character, and I never really noticed (or remembered) just how much he is around in the hard drive world.  He is an antivirus for the library, and he’s…  a Doctor.  I read up on it and discovered that Steven Moffat wrote Doctor Moon as though he is a far-off regeneration of the Doctor, who uploaded his consciousness into the library to help the people there and to be “with” River Song in the afterlife.

I think it’s an interesting added layer to this story.  But I hope the Doctor never stops traveling and changing the universe for the better.  I hope it’s more like he uploaded a copy of himself rather than doing this as some final act in life.  It is sad to imagine DW without its Doctor.

There is a lot I could say about these episodes.  I could say it’s unfair we just met River and already we witnessed her death.  I could say I don’t understand whether it made sense that Donna was able to go to Cal’s world and return and be flesh and blood again.  I could implore that something be done to make this library off-limits to future visitors since it is kind of a death trap.  But all I can really say is these were some really deep episodes with some lasting implications for the future of the Doctor and the series.

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I think it’s kind of funny that this episode and its second part get two separate threads.  As a matter of fact I think I’ll just put my thoughts on the second part.

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@janetteb I remember reading that VotD had some pretty high ratings when it aired.  The UK must have been itching for more Doctor Who that Christmas lol.  But I kind of get it, the episode had a couple of big names, had the Titanic, and came along in an abrupt ending from the episode before.

It felt like Lynda with a Y was there to show that not everyone makes it as the Doctor’s companion, especially when the Daleks are involved.  Really she had a pretty lousy fate after just getting out of the big brother house with the Ninth Doctor.

@dentarthurdent He didn’t have the best conclusion with Donna either.  Or Amy.  And I am guessing not Clara or Bill either.  Come to think of it, we really need the Doctor to have more companions like Martha who actually survive and get to leave on better terms lol.

I have never heard Billie Piper sing either.  I wonder which she considers her more favorite accomplishment, her pop career or her time as a companion in DW?

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@janetteb

@dentarthurdent

I’m assuming you guys are talking about Chibnall discarding a lot of things in DW.  I know he rewrote a lot of big things.  At least The Power of the Doctor will include the Daleks, Cybermen and the Master.

I think Jenny could still be in play if they have a good way to bring her back.  Unlikely yes, but impossible no.  I think AG DW is getting to have a lot of episodes though, so it is asking a lot of fans to accept the return of a character from clear back in series 4.  But then we are talking about a show that has brought back creatures from the sixties.

Maybe The Poison Sky was unrealistic.  I guess I accepted the resolution in the moment, lol.

Yeah, I seem to remember The Unicorn and the Wasp wasn’t well-received.  But I looked it up and it seems as though the episode received pretty decent review scores.  So I am assuming it must not have been as well-received by fans.  Or at least among circles of fans it was considered a weaker episode.

I, too, wonder about this wedding speech.

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I watched The Unicorn and the Wasp.

So apparently the story is true and Agatha Christie did go missing one night in 1926.  In this episode the Doctor and Donna are guests at a dinner party along with Christie, and a large wasp is attacking and killing the guests.  The wasp is the monster in this story, and is known as a Vespiform.  Christie and the Doctor try to solve the mystery of who the killer is, and it comes off like Clue or, more apparently, like an Agatha Christie novel.

I can remember back when I first became a DW fan, this is one of the episodes fans pointed to as an example of one of the worst episodes in the show’s run.  While this is by no means a superb episode, I think it did have some fun moments.  Most notably when they’re asking all of the guests what they were doing at 4 o’clock, and every guest leaves something out of their stories.

Aside from the Wasp there is the Unicorn, which is a thief who is trying to steal a necklace from the hostess.  This is figured out pretty easily a while before the Wasp.

The antagonist is eventually figured out, and Agatha fulfills her destiny to vanish that night, returning with no memory of the night before.  The necklace is shown to have binding powers and is affecting Agatha Christie until the villain finally lets her go.  It was fun to see the crystal ball containing the Carrionites is still in the Doctor’s possession, in a chest beneath the TARDIS’ grates.

So all in all this episode didn’t have the most diabolical or original villain, and the stakes weren’t very high.  But that’s okay, not every episode of DW needs to be a Silence in the Library.  I think it made for a fun episode and something a little bit easier and less anxious, and paid an homage to the writing of Agatha Christie.

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I watched through The Doctor’s Daughter.

Clearly most of this episode was some message about the pointlessness of war.  It follows a group of humans and Hath that have been fighting each other for a grand total of 7 days, but it has seemed like the war has been going on much longer to the clones whose generations go by quicker.

The Doctor is forced to put his hand into a machine and make a clone soldier of his own, a Time Lord named Jenny.  Jenny is played by the daughter of Fifth Doctor Peter Davison and eventual wife of David Tennant.  Jenny has the instincts of a soldier, but after confrontations with the Doctor, is able to change her ways and become a more peaceful person.

The Hath are sort of the monsters for this episode, but are basically more peaceful than the humans.  They look like fish people with special tanks on their faces to breathe out of water or something.  Martha becomes separated from the Doctor and Donna early in the episode and helps a wounded Hath, becoming a friend to them.

I liked that the numbers they kept seeing above doors and things turned out to be dates, and that Donna figured it out.  I also liked that the “Source” turned out to be a terraforming orb, used to make the planet habitable.  Though despite that, the background imagery for the planet’s surface did look pretty cool whenever they showed Martha and the one Hath traveling across it.

The episode did have a bit of a twist ending, which I’d forgotten.  Jenny is shot and the Doctor says goodbye, believing she is unable to regenerate but content that she shared a lot in common with him after all.  But Jenny is shown to pull through being shot and jumps back up to take the space ship and go on adventures of her own throughout the universe.  It leaves the door open for Jenny to appear on the show again, though that likely won’t happen.  Especially this many years later.  I am satisfied with the idea that she survived and is out there somewhere, anyway.

I will probably be posting on this thread at least one more time after watching the next episode.

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@dentarthurdent I think Clive Swift appearing in the episode (and surviving all the way through it!) was something that hit the nostalgia button for me since my parents used to watch Keeping Up Appearances when they would show it on the PBS.  I read on Wikipedia that he apparently gave a very grumpy interview about being in the episode to DW Magazine, but I guess at his age that sort of crotchety behavior would have been forgivable.

Kylie was obviously a pretty big name in music back in the day.  I remember when I got my second XBOX 360 with the Kinect, Can’t Get You Out of My Head was one of the songs you danced to on Dance Central.  I almost got the impression in the episode that Astrid would have survived and could have made a new companion for the Doctor in season 4, but knowing that Minogue is from Australia I doubt scheduling would have worked out for that anyway.  Astrid simply went the way of Lynda “with a Y.”

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@dentarthurdent Streaming works much better in modern times.   Broadband, it should work just fine.  I use a wireless wi-fi connection for all of my Internet-connected devices.  Sometimes I watch the occasional episode on my phone.

From what I can tell the DVDs are much more reasonable in price nowadays than they were back when I bought them, at least the ones I owned before.  I saw people on Poshmark selling seasons 1-13 for under $70, but I did notice that doesn’t include Tennant’s specials from 2009 and 2010.  There may very well be other specials or Christmas episodes missing as well.

You know Smith did a pretty bang-up job when he stepped into the role.  I think he did a great job playing an old and brilliant mind in a youthful body.  I think it was hard to adjust coming off of Eccleston and Tennant, and the writing for the show certainly changed a lot with series 5.  I think Karen Gillan got me first as this fiery young woman who knew the Doctor all through her life, and somewhere along the way Smith really nailed it and knew the character of the Doctor inside and out.  I will miss the RTD years when I complete my rewatch of them, but I am looking forward to seeing how I feel about the Moffat years when I get to watch them again.

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@janetteb Yeah, you know this is one of the episodes that I remembered not enjoying quite as much back in 2010, but I found to be much more entertaining the second time around.  A lot of episodes have been like that for me.

I’m glad you were able to find things you liked about Voyage of the Damned.  You know for me, quite a lot of these episodes I only ever saw one time, back in 2010.  So I have forgotten lots about them, and usually only remember one or two moments that stood out at the time.  The whole rewatching experience has turned out to be something I definitely needed, since my memories of the series were outdated.

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I watched The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky.  Of course since RTD or anyone else special didn’t write it, so it has no thread.

The basic plot is the Sontarans want to use Earth as a clone world, to make more Sontarans.  To achieve this they’ve placed poisonous gas into the ATMOS navigation systems that most cars in the show have, which when released is the gas necessary for the cloning process.  This whole plot seems unrealistic because a lot of people really know cars and wouldn’t let something like this slip by.

Even as the Doctor points out, nothing the Sontarans do is really straightforward or honorable in these episodes.  They make clones of two UNIT soldiers, which are still alive even though the people they are copies of don’t seem to be around like Martha was for her clone.  They team up with crazed boy genius to get the gas into the atmosphere in this sort of offhanded way to begin with, rather than just launching the gas there.  There’s just so many questionable things about what the Sontarans did.  Even their ability to stop ballistic guns from firing is dodgy later on in the episodes.

I liked that we got to see Martha again despite her no longer being a main companion.  Really the only part I had significant memory of from these episodes was the Sontarans doing their little war chant with boy genius.  So I don’t remember exactly how Martha’s engagement factors into things.  Apparently she’ll be tagging along for a couple of adventures though.

My favorite moment from these episodes was when the Doctor is wearing a gas mask with everyone else outside, and does the “Are you my mummy?” thing.

The Sontarans themselves look greatly identical to their original appearance in BG episodes, but at the same time somehow greatly improved.  I think their armor looks better, and I took note of some minor differences between the Sontarans like the one having a soul patch.  Like I said though, their actions are so anti-Sontaran in these episodes that I feel later episodes do a better job of showcasing the Sontarans.

There was also one point where the Sontarans told the boy genius that they were locking down their teleporter areas so people couldn’t come there that way again.  And people still kept doing it.  I’m not sure if it was overlooked or if it was a continuity thing or what, but it seemed like more problems for the sake of there being problems for our heroes to face.

The Doctor’s solution to burn the gas out of the skies was cool.  The moment he almost went to sacrifice himself to destroy the Sontaran ship was overkill, so I’m glad genius boy switched places with him to finish the job.  I would say this is the weakest of the two-part stories in series 4, but it is still very watchable.

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I watched Planet of the Ood, which again there aren’t threads for many of these episodes so I’ll keep posting here for a while.

I am obviously pretty fond of the episode, since the Ood are my favorite DW creatures.  I will add on to that by saying that the Doctor and Donna don’t have a lot to do in the episode, and everything is already sort of in play.  If anything the Doctor succeeds in slightly stalling Halpen from setting off the explosives and destroying the third, massive Ood brain.

Planet of the Ood basically gives us a look at the Ood trade and how they came to be a slave race.  We learn that where their translator orb is located was originally their hind-brain, which they carry around.  The Ood want to bring down the “circle”, a barrier that is blocking the big Ood brain from fully communicating with the Ood.  (Albeit slightly, as Dr. Ryder reveals himself to be a friend of the Ood, and had kept the barrier on its lowest setting.)  The Ood, despite years of objection to the truth, want to get back to their natural way of living and not be used for slavery.  The Ood want to sing together.

I think more than anything the episode takes a hard look at many emotions and at trustworthiness.  Anger, sadness, even patience are explored through the Ood.  And we watch as time and time again people are given the chance to right things and make the wrong choice.  A good example is when the PR lady just gives away the location of the Doctor and Donna.  Dr. Ryder and the Ood might be the only deaths in this episode that you walk away feeling sad about, since most of the supporting characters in the episode were jerks anyway, or else were soldiers following orders to kill the Ood.

There is a moment where the episode explores things from Donna’s perspective, mentioning how she longed to see the Doctor again and go see amazing sights across the universe, but now she has seen bad things and wants to go home.  I thought it was necessary to explore the conflicted feelings a companion might face while traveling with the Doctor, especially when their first two adventures featured lots of killing and slavery.

I loved the big reveal that Ood Sigma had slowly been lacing Halpen’s hair tonic with a special serum to turn him into an Ood.  It’s fates like these that are usually reserved for some of the biggest offenders in the Whoniverse, in this case Halpen gets to live as a creature he spent his entire life treating as a commodity.

I’m glad that we get to see the Ood a bit more after this, but I’m thankful for the episode giving them a beautiful, snowy homeland.  I think sometimes it really pays off for the writers to give monsters a second episode and catch up with them in another place or time.

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I watched The Fires of Pompeii again so I’ll talk about it here.  …I might be using this thread for several episodes, actually.

Well right off the bat this episode features both Karen Gillan and Peter Capaldi in roles as a member of the Sisterhood and an art-collecting family man, respectively.

I usually don’t like the olden time episodes but this one is good.

Most of the episode centers around the volcano, and the Sisterhood and Lucius having psychic abilities from communicating with molten rock beings called Pyroviles.

The circuits Lucius commissions looked pretty cool.  The plot was a bit convoluted but I guess the circuits are being used to keep the volcano from erupting.

The Pyrovilles and the Sisterhood looked cool.  Even turned-to-stone leader of the Sisterhood.  Yeah so the Sisterhood (and Lucius) consume the vapors from the pits of fire, which is revealed to be stone sediment.  It gradually turns them to stone, and makes them into vessels for the Pyrovilles.

I liked the Doctor realizing that he was always the cause of Pompeii being destroyed.  Yes usually it bothers me when the show messes with historic events, but the way it was presented in this episode was well done.

Probably the most important lines were “She is returning”, and “There’s something on your back.”  But more importantly Donna’s insistence that the Doctor tries to save somebody, anybody from the volcano.

The Doctor and Donna being the household’s new beings to pray to was a cute moment.  It was good he tried to save somebody, but I feel like the show goes back and forth on the Doctor’s reasoning for saving people or stepping aside.

I also noted that the background looked better in this episode than in a lot of other old timey ones.  Well that is because it was actually filmed on-location in Rome.

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@dentarthurdent Excellent question!  So back in 2010 I started getting the DVD sets for series 1-4 and the specials set.  I never got around to buying any of the Eleventh Doctor series, just because it was already quite expensive to buy British shows on DVD here in the US, and it took a little while for Matt Smith to grow on me.

I no longer own those DVDs, but I remember how cool the main TARDIS menus were, and how in season 4 or something the TARDIS was on fire.

(I actually watched Time Crash on Youtube recently, but I forget which special had the Doctor making music in the air or something.  I never saw the cartoons with the 10th Doctor.)

But now I’m watching the episodes through streaming.  Here in the US that means HBO Max.  I like it, and I hope HBO is smart enough to hold onto DW rather than let it go over to Disney +.

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I think the Adipose were another great creature idea, but if they were all infants then it would still be interesting to revisit them and see what they look like once they become adults.  I don’t recall the Adipose ever appearing again.  It was a bit weird to hear they converted from bone and hair and other things besides just fat.

Like the other users mentioned here many years ago now, the shining beacon of light in this episode was the comedy chemistry between the Doctor and Donna.  Seeing them miss running into each other many times was great, but seeing them finally run into each other and have a full on conversation without words through the windows was a brilliant moment.

The pill necklace was key to the plot, but was kind of a sketchy plot point.  I still don’t fully know how it worked, but apparently it made more Adipose.  Conversely at the end of the episode they helped the Doctor stop the creation of Adipose altogether.

The Foster mother having a sonic device of her own was a funny twist, and also made for a nightmare scene when she used it to leave the Doctor and Donna dangling from rope on the side of the building.  Seeing the Doctor use two sonic devices on each other was also a bit fun, and at least caused a worthwhile distraction.

Donna bringing tons of clothes that she had saved up for whenever she finally ran into the Doctor again was another great Donna moment.  So was the misunderstanding when Donna thought the Doctor said he wants to mate instead of “I want a mate.”  We didn’t get the same sort of introduction to Donna’s family as we got with Rose and Martha, but most of the screen time rightly went to Wilf.  It was as great seeing his happy reaction to Donna being in the TARDIS as it was seeing him completely miss the large UFO that took the Adipose.

Rose being at the end of the episode was another unexpected twist.

It was a nice, fun episode to ease us into the new season with Donna.  I’d say it was mission accomplished.

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So I think this episode might be a little underrated, and it had a lot going on in it.

We have the introduction of Wilf, who’s running a news stand when the group teleports off of the ship to Earth.  The episode has a slew of one-off characters, including Kylie Minogue as Astrid, and Clive Swift as Mr. Copper.  It also features a character named Alonzo, so the Doctor can finally say, “Allons-y, Alonzo!”

The monster of the episode is the Hosts, which are golden angel robots that are meant to answer questions for passengers on the ship, until they go on a murderous rampage.  The antagonist is Max Capricorn, owner of the space Titanic and mostly a cyborg, and I like that his gold tooth shines in person like it did on the video.  Max’s business is apparently not doing well so he decides to destroy his ship and crash it into Earth, so he can go bankrupt and blame the board of directors for the murders. (Because I guess that’s what will happen?)  Mostly I thought Max Capricorn was funny during his time in the episode.

Much of the episode plays out like The Poseidon Adventure, with the Doctor leading the group of survivors through the ship on the way to the bridge.  One by one characters begin to die, until only a few survivors are left.  The death of Banna grants the survivors an EMP device from his cyborg body, which they use to destroy Hosts on their way through the ship.  Astrid’s death scene was honestly pretty cool, taking Max out with a forklift.

I thought the scene with the Doctor taking control of the Hosts and using them to fly upwards through the floor of the bridge was really awesome, though apparently that scene caused a lot of backlash from members of the religious community.  The scene where the ship almost crashes into Buckingham Palace seemed a little ridiculous, since the ship could crash at any point on Earth but it winds up where the Doctor usually goes.  I am guessing the writers really wanted to get some mention of the Queen into the Christmas episode.

The Doctor’s discovery that Astrid was wearing a teleporter leads to some false hope, since for a second you’re thinking she can be saved.  I guess turning her into space dust to travel through the universe is a bittersweet alternative.

The conversation Mr. Copper has with the Doctor about it being funny the rude man was one of the survivors, and how he would be a monster if he could choose who lives and who dies was a nice addition to the ending.  You almost get the sense that these are the sort of conversations the Doctor has to have with himself at times.  At least using the teleporters Mr. Copper could avoid jail time, and learn that he is wealthy.

The episode was much more entertaining than I’d remembered, and made for a solid stand-alone episode.

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I had mixed feelings about this series 3 finale on my rewatch.  On the one hand both episodes taken together (and maybe including Utopia), felt a bit like a Doctor Who movie.  At the same time I felt like this could have been a better story pitting the Doctor against the Master.  But I generally enjoyed it, and there were some really great and memorable scenes.

I was confused by the Master’s wife’s actions.  One minute she is supporting him through thick and thin despite his murderous intentions, the next she is gunning him down.  Also confusing was the whole plot with Toclafane orb things, which turned out to be the heads of the people sent to Utopia, which the Master had brought back and made an army of killers with.  Maybe that plot was just more nonsensical than anything.

The Paradox Machine the Master had created out of the TARDIS was a nice touch, and shows that the Master used the Doctor’s ship for evil deeds even though he could only travel back and forth to the Utopia civilization.  I liked that the Master also had a sonic laser.  The Master greatly aging the Doctor to elder status, and again to become a small, frail little being was something that stuck with me when I saw it ages ago.

I liked that Martha was able to escape for a year and do her part to spread the story of the Doctor.  Even though the whole concept of everyone thinking of the Doctor to save him via the Archangel thing was kind of an easy way of resolving things, it was satisfying seeing the Doctor overcome the Master’s work and hover like a supernatural being.  The misdirection with the time lord-stopping gun was a bit weird, as was the betrayal of the scientist woman.

The Master refusing to regenerate to be stubborn and to prevent conceding to the Doctor was a great moment.  Also brilliant was Captain Jack’s concerns over what will happen when he continues aging, and his revelation that he was once known as “The Face of Boe.”  At the end of the episode Martha was able to make a clean break and stop travelling with the Doctor on her own terms, rather than to continue feeling like a placeholder for Rose.  I also like that she sees the world needs help and being a doctor she decides to stay and help out however she can.

I think the opportunity to make this some real battle of the minds between the Doctor and Master was squandered a bit, but it’s fine considering that this isn’t really the last we see of the Master.  Come to think of it, it would have been disappointing if they brought the Master back for 3 episodes and then dispatched him in the AG series.

I think series 3 as a whole was better than series 2, holding true to my opinion that each Doctor improves in the role over time.  Especially the back half of the season saw a lot of memorable episodes.  Of course I’ve still got the Voyage of the Damned to go, which could either be considered the season finale or opener for next season depending on how you choose to look at it.

My final thought would be I’m pretty far into the Tenth Doctor’s run now, but quite possibly my favorite season of his is yet to come.  And I’ve got quite a few specials to watch!  It amazes me how much I’ve already rewatched at this point, and it will take some mental adjusting to get used to the Eleventh Doctor again, since that’s basically a reboot of everything the AG series did up to that point.  But as I continue my rewatch, I get gradually closer to the point where I left off at series 9.

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@dentarthurdent There you go, you even recalled another great quote from Blink!  And yes, the whole way the conversation on the DVD was presented seemed pretty original.

Though the later Weeping Angels episodes might not be as good as their initial appearance, I am glad they weren’t just left as a one-off enemy.  I didn’t know they come back again even, so that will be something to look forward to when I get to the Chibnall years.  (No clue how long that will take me, but I’ll get there when I get there I suppose.)

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@dentarthurdent I wish I could think of specific episodes, but surely a lot of John Pertwee and Tom Baker episodes went to similar-looking settings.  I want to say The Three Doctors had this kind of setting on Omega’s planet, but that’s just me going off of memory.  It was sort of a quarry-looking place, but I’ve no clue if it had any connection to Blakes 7.

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I wrote a whole response and lost it, so I will just do a quick recap.

I thought Martha’s discovery of the fob watch identical to the one from Family of Blood was a brilliant way to reveal Dr. Yana was another time lord.  I also thought the YANA acronym was clever.

The Futurekind reminded me of the Ferengi from Star Trek.  I was disappointed we never really got an explanation of where they came from.  Likewise, even though the humans check everyone’s teeth before they can enter the gate, it is never made clear how one of the Futurekind snuck through to cause havoc.

I thought the Doctor was kind of a jerk to Jack, first taking off even though he saw he was running to the TARDIS and then admitting he just left him at the end of series 1 even though he knew he was alive.  Jack working close to Cardiff because he knew the Doctor would eventually stop at the rift to refuel was a smart move.  I noticed at one point somebody mentioned the Face of Boe and Jack didn’t react to it.

This is essentially a three-part ending for the season instead of the usual two-parter.  The episode was pretty well-done.  The scenes set outside sort of reminded me of old episodes of DW where everyone is outside of some alien base or something, in fact I wonder if it was used as an old set.

Well I can’t remember everything I originally touched on now, but I thought it was a good episode.

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I rewatched Blink, and it really did go down a bit differently than I’d remembered since it’s been so long since I watched it.

The episode is among the best of the series, and works so well because there is an explanation for everything that happens.  With all of the communication going on across time, there is a reason shown for how all of the information gets transferred.  Even the conclusion of the episode was well thought-out, having the Weeping Angels tricked into looking at each other through a fading TARDIS.

The storytelling method was good, and didn’t need the Doctor and Martha there the entire time to tell a good DW story.  We’re following Sally as she learns about all of the strange things going on, and piecing things together along with her.

I liked seeing the Doctor and Martha on another random adventure involving a bow and arrows, similar to how the Doctor and Rose were trying to pour some sort of fluid onto a monster in Love and Monsters.  It gives the impression that the Doctor is going on more random adventures than just the ones we see whole episodes about.

One question I had about the episode was how Sally’s friend was sent back to 1920, but the Doctor and the police officer were sent back to 1969.  Apparently in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, this was explained because the year you’re sent to depends on which Angel touches you.

There were a lot of good and memorable lines from this one.  Obviously timey-wimey.  Sad being happy for deep people.  And “It goes ding when there’s stuff.”  I feel like these episodes centered around other characters really give us a different perspective on the Doctor and his companions, and allows for these fun exchanges.

The Weeping Angels themselves are brilliant villains, and easily among the best new monsters in the AG series.  I think the way this story was told played to their strengths, while I recall later stories involving them to be a bit of a rehash.  I was impressed to find that all of them were actors in makeup, which is just impressive since they look so statue-like.  Lastly I thought it was a stroke of genius to have the Angels point at the light bulb in the room and try to make the light go out so they couldn’t be watched by Sally and Larry while advancing on them.

Honestly late series 3 sees a slew of great episodes, and Blink is definitely a highlight of 2007.

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These were some really great episodes, and as someone else mentioned it’s followed by the also great Blink.  I am not even sure where to start with discussing this story.

Well right off the bat the way this story is presented is well-done.  We don’t see the initial meeting between the Family of Blood and the Doctor and Martha, but we know they were shooting at them and get a quick run-down of what is about to happen on the TARDIS.  The whole plot with the fob watch being used to house the Doctor’s consciousness while he uses the headgear to rewrite the cells in his body and become human is something I’m sure fans wouldn’t have thought possible before this episode.

Martha really is a trooper in this one, as others have pointed out cleaning and dealing with outdated views for several months just to stick to the Doctor’s plan and outlast the Family.  The scene at the dance hall where Martha gets a gun and orders everyone safely out of the room and away from the Family was great.  And on top of everything she does to try to convince John Smith to change back into the Doctor, she still has to watch him fall for another woman.

The Family was really well-acted and made up of an eclectic group.  The scarecrow soldiers were a great new monster.  Even the Family’s ship felt like its own unique brand of alien.  I think it was fitting that they wanted to consume the Doctor to be granted the immortality of a Time Lord, and the Doctor punished all of them by giving them some cruel immortal fate.  The twist with the story is that the Doctor was trying to spare the Family this cruel fate and let them die peacefully of starvation.

I see some of you didn’t agree that John Smith made a realistic school teacher for the period.  Maybe not, but I thought it was a job that suited the Doctor if he were actually to live a mortal life, surrounded by books and teaching others.  We get to see essentially what the life of the Doctor would be like if he were an ordinary man.

I felt like the young boy really screwed everything up, taking the fob watch and opening it up several times.  If he hadn’t found the watch then it’s quite possible the Family of Blood wouldn’t have found the Doctor, and would have just wasted their last month of life.  He has this outburst at one point and says the Doctor is just as bad as the Family, and I wonder if it’s because he saw how he deals with the Family in the future and doesn’t know whether he should give the watch back.  At the same time, he gleaned visions of his own future during the war, and that eventually helped him out to avoid shell fire.  The scene where the Doctor and Martha visit the aged soldier during a ceremony was a nice touch.

All of the details in the Doctor’s book of “dreams” were also really cool.  I wonder how much time and effort it took for someone to put that together for the show, just so we could catch glimpses of it.

I feel like I could talk about this more, but I’ve covered all of the main points I could think of.  Once again, this was a pretty stellar two-parter, and is among some of the best episodes in the series.

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I just rewatched 42.  I wasn’t aware of “24” being the inspiration for the episode.

This episode felt kind of like The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as those two.  I wonder if the space suit worn in this episode was the same as the one from those, maybe with a few cosmetic tweaks.

Doctor climbing out of the airlock to press buttons and flip a switch caused a lot of anxiety, as did the escape pod being launched with Martha and the crewmate inside.  The woman choosing to jump out of the air lock with her possessed (?) husband also seemed like a death that didn’t have to happen, but did anyway.

I sort of liked the idea of this living sun, and the leader of the group being responsible for irritating it because she never scanned for signs of life before I guess using the sun’s energy to fuel up.  All of those doors being passcode locked on the way to the main control room seemed really inconvenient for anyone on this ship, and was most definitely a writer’s plot to make resolving the situation more dicey.

The kiss scene was a bit out of left-field, but I guess makes sense since both of them were trapped in a launched space pod and were recovered just in time.  The kiss happening while they were in the escape pod might have been more believable.

I walked away from the episode feeling like it was filler, but ambitious filler.

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I watched The Lazarus Experiment, so I’ll discuss it here.

There are quite a few episodes from season 3 I didn’t remember real well, and this was one of them.  I’d say this episode was kind of like the Martha version of any Rose episode where they return back to London and stuff is going on there.  We get to see more of Martha’s family.

Probably the biggest development of the episode is the Doctor was about to leave Martha back home, but finally decides to take her aboard as a full companion.  The episode also does the most so far this season to progress the Saxon arc, with Saxon’s associate misleading Martha’s mother into believing that the Doctor is a bad man.

The plot of the episode revolves around a professor named Rich Lazarus who Martha’s sister works for, and his attempt to de-age himself and prolong his life.  Of course the whole process nearly causes the de-aging machine to explode until the Doctor steps in to stop it, and though Lazarus considers the experiment a success it begins to mutate him.  Lazarus keeps randomly morphing into a genetically-altered being due to activating inactive DNA in his own body, and feeds off of people by sucking the juice out of them.

There are some interesting conversations raised throughout the episode between the Doctor and Lazarus regarding lifespans, and whether or not prolonging life is a good thing.  I have to think if there were no monstrous side-effects to the procedure, maybe the Doctor would be a little more understanding of it?  Maybe slightly, anyway.

The CGI for mutated Lazarus is quite wonky, but it looks imposing and scary enough.  Due to actual science saying we have inactive strands of DNA in our bodies, I can kind of buy that the thing Lazarus turns into could be something a human being could become after horrid genetic manipulation.  I would say coming off of the old New York episodes with the pig slaves and the Dalek Sec-human hybrid, the difference between the show’s use of costumes and CGI is day and night.

I’m about halfway through series 3 now.  I know there are some very good episodes yet to come.  At least the next episode has its own thread, so I can stop updating Gridlock.

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I watched Evolution of the Daleks, so I’ll give my thoughts on it now.

Firstly the scene with the radio was pretty good.  I half-expected Dalek Sec to ask what the music was and to be impacted by it, but it was used to create a diversion that stopped the Daleks for a few minutes – apparently the pig slaves, too.

When the Daleks started flying I sort of liked it, since they already have the ability to “elevate”, so why not just give them the ability to fly.  I’ll admit I’m still confused about why Martha was given the psychic paper, I presume it let her get in to use the elevator on the ground floor or something.

I hadn’t kept track of when the Doctor got a new sonic screwdriver, but by these episodes he definitely had a new one. (In the first episode of the season I believe his old one was fried.)  He almost loses the sonic screwdriver again, but fortunately Martha finds it and gets it back to him.  I was particularly bothered by the scene where Tallulah stood near the edge and looked out upon the city, and again when the Doctor was climbing up and trying to remove the Dalek metal plates from the top of the skyscraper.  A few episodes ago the Doctor and Donna both just sat on the edge of a building like it was no big deal.  I guess if there were a first batch of episodes that test my fear of heights then these are it.

Dalek Sec as a dalek-human hybrid was a good idea.  While I question how the human that turned into him seemed seedier than the hybrid, and therefore the human was crappier than the dalek-human hybrid, I still like the idea that the human DNA made Dalek Sec more compassionate and capable as a leader.  It was fun seeing the Doctor work with Dalek Sec for a little bit there.

The discovery of the human bodies to be used to create more hybrids was something, but I gotta question why the daleks would ever think this was a sufficient replacement for more daleks.  There would guaranteed be dalek bias, and the new daleks with human bodies would be seen as lesser beings.  All around in these two episodes there are things I have to stop and ask myself, “Would a dalek do that?”

I thought making the dalek lasers for the humans into tommy guns was a nice touch given the time period.

The Cult of Skaro is no more, but Dalek Khan flees.  I can’t remember where or when it turns up again, but I’m sure that gets addressed at some point.  Given the number of dalek episodes throughout the years, I would be surprised if we just moved on to an entirely new dalek plot.

And because I hadn’t seen the episode in so long I thought Laszlo was a gonner, so it was a surprise to see the Doctor find a way to save him in the daleks’ chemical lab.  I liked this pair of episodes more than a lot of the other ones set in past times.

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@dentarthurdent I guess that is something that bugged me about The Shakespeare Code a little bit.  Whenever the Doctor is shown to be the originator of things that important people in history did, it feels like it takes too much credit from them.  I guess it’s slightly balanced out by Shakespeare being the one whose words ultimately banished the Carrionites, and by Martha throwing in some quick Harry Potter reference to help save the day.  But I feel like the writers tread the line of almost giving too much credit to the Doctor for historical events sometimes.

I guess I still just feel that realistically it would be too difficult for a doctor like Martha, or some other really busy person to be the Doctor’s companion.  I think the show does a good job of pulling the breaks on romantic interest between the Doctor and Martha (“I only go for humans”, or whatever.) and Donna.

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I watched S3 Episode 4, Daleks in Manhattan.  I haven’t yet gotten to the second episode of this two-parter, so this will be a quick mention and then I’ll probably do a different one for the next episode.

I guess right away the pig slaves harken back to the pig creature that showed up way back in the episode with the Slitheen.  It seems like they recycled that idea a little bit, but took it a bit further by making them adult-sized and creepier.  I feel like they didn’t really land as a monster race, and considering that the Daleks are already using cheap slave labor as an incentive for the workers in New York, I think it would have made more sense to just make the Dalek goons poor humans.

The Empire State Building and its unsafe, rushed construction in this episode was more frightening than anything else.  Ultimately the Daleks are trying to create some sort of transmission tower or something (I forget what exactly, but it will probably be explained in more detail in the next episode.) using the top of the skyscraper.

The unveiling of the Dalek Sec/human hybrid was more interesting.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure how Dalek Sec and the Cult of Skaro managed to reappear after being sucked back into the Void a few episodes ago, but I’ll imagine it’s because they were another dimension’s version of them that was not sucked into the Void.

So much of the episode hinges on the love story of Tallulah and Laszlo, but it sort of becomes a beauty and the beast thing.  Soloman’s speech to the people in Hooverville to take up arms will likely have some effect in the next episode, but again I don’t remember these episodes that well.

I guess one looming question I have is what was the jellyfish thing the Doctor found in the sewers?  It came from Skaro, okay, but what is it, exactly?  I’m guessing it was just thrown into the plot so the Doctor would have an aha moment and realize the Daleks were back.

I’ll eventually make another post here after I watch Evolution of the Daleks.

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I liked this episode, and I think the interesting thing about it is that the real monster wasn’t the Macra, but the insane traffic.

It’s a nightmare to imagine a future where society lives years of their lives stuck in traffic, moving barely any distance over that span of time.  It’s not even that uncommon for people to be kidnapped and used to gain access to the fast lane.  At the same time it made for a different sort of storytelling method with the Doctor moving between different cars to reach the fast lane, and trying to resolve things in this overpopulated dystopia where his next chance of leaving a vehicle and stepping back into the city might be as far as 6 months away.

It was good to see the Face of Boe again, and as someone pointed out up above, this episode is kind of like the end of a loose trilogy with the season 1 and 2 episodes featuring Cassandra and Boe.  The poignant conclusion with the death of the Face of Boe hits a little bit, but is even more defined after watching the rest of the season.  The warning that the Doctor isn’t alone fits with the events of the season, but I wonder how Boe knew that for sure.

Much of the episode revolved around the Doctor trying not to talk to Martha about Gallifrey.  It didn’t seem like some big lie as much as it did just something the Doctor wanted to keep personal, but the Doctor opening up about it at the end of the episode seemed to be a sign of him finally easing up and becoming closer to his new companion.

The vendors selling patches that give people feelings was a clever touch, as was the Bliss patch that apparently brought down everyone running New New York.  The cat and human couple having kitties was cute but at the same time made me think that their offspring would be more like a cat and human hybrid.  And it made me curious whether the Doctor was telling the truth about getting his iconic jacket from Janis Joplin.

I feel like I should have more to say about this episode, but that pretty much covers it.  I think New New York is frightening, and it’s good that Boe and the Doctor were able to free the people on the motorway.

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I watched S3 E2, The Shakespeare Code.  No thread, posting here.

So as I’ve stated before, I tend to not like episodes set in the far past as much as others.  I wasn’t into this one as much.  The Carrionites made an alright enemy, basically witches trying to use voo-doo and other such methods to manipulate others so that they could unleash the end of the world with the power of words at the end of a play.

Shakespeare himself was ok, and it’s maybe forgivable that he doesn’t look exactly like the paintings suggest since that would have been an odd look to pull off for the episode.  I guess it was interesting that they suggested because he was a genius he could see through the psychic paper.  The flirting with Martha was a bit of fun I guess.

We got to see the Doctor use his mind-reading-like abilities for the third time in the AG series so far, to get the man at the mental hospital to remember information about the Carrionites.  The episode also had references to Harry Potter, which came into play again at the conclusion of the episode.  I found the “shade” creatures to be a bit too cartoony in the CGI scenes.

It made sense the Doctor wanted to keep the crystal ball safe and out of the hands of the wrong people, but it’s weird to think that it’s stored somewhere on the TARDIS with the Carrionites trapped inside of it.  I liked the ending with Queen Elizabeth the First naming the Doctor as an enemy and chasing him back to the TARDIS, and now I’m curious whether there will be some other episode this season where that originates, but I can’t remember.

I don’t have much else to add and I felt like this was sort of a filler episode.  But I guess the Doctor changed his mind and decided to bring Martha on more than one TARDIS trip at some point after this episode, maybe in the beginning of the next one.

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@cornealiariggar That is interesting if it is true!

So this episode features the introduction of the Tenth Doctor’s blue suit, which is like an alternate outfit for him I guess until a certain point in the series.  I liked both suits but the blue one really pops, and became my favorite of the two.

It is also the introduction of Martha Jones as the Doctor’s second main companion.  So the way they introduced Martha in this episode was quick but efficient, by having us catch phone conversations between her and her family members.  You get the gist of what all of Martha’s family members are like.   I thought Martha made a good companion, but I have issue with the way she is a busy doctor trying to fit adventures in with her hectic life.  It just seems a bit much, especially after we’ve seen how the Doctor’s timing with the TARDIS can be off by several days or a year at times.

I remember reading some time ago that the whole purpose of this episode was to get David Tennant to say “The Judoon platoon on the moon”, which I guess is tricky for Scottish people.  The Judoon are maybe refreshing because they are threatening but not the main antagonist, and are just after someone in their jurisdiction.  The plasmavore was of course the big baddie in this one, and I thought the whole plot to trick her into drinking the Doctor’s blood to register as an alien again was clever.

I did happen to notice the signs for Saxon in the background of the episode.  So there it is, this season also had its own version of Bad Wolf and Torchwood!  I either didn’t remember or else overlooked it years ago when I originally watched these episodes.  I guess with these easter eggs it’s something that doesn’t make sense until much later in the season when we discover who Saxon is.  In a way I feel like these easter eggs are getting a little bit repetitive by this point, and I wonder if anything quite like it carried on into the fourth season.

In this episode the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver also got destroyed.  Now I am curious to see when and how he gets a new one, and if there is any mention of the old one being junked.  If I have any final thoughts, then it’s just that Martha has a cool jacket and she looks good in it.

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I enjoyed the whole scene where the Doctor was flying the TARDIS down the highway, trying to get Donna to jump into it.

This episode had a lot of great lines and moments, but the only one I can remember was when the Doctor pulled the remote control out of his pockets and explained “they’re bigger on the inside.”  The Segway scene was fun, too.

The betrayl of Donna’s fiance was something I’d forgotten about, but it enabled Catherine Tate to inject some range into the character.  Donna really didn’t have the best day.

The Racnoss had neat makeup work, but I’m not sure I buy that it was part of the creation of the planet at the center of the Earth.  I also don’t know if I agree with the Doctor’s method of dealing with the babies in the core of the planet.

I like that we got to see the Doctor work through some of his recent grief over the loss of Rose, and she wasn’t simply left in the past.  The seeds were certainly there for having Donna be a companion, but I wonder if the production team knew she would come back or if she was intended as a one-off character.

The Santa’s.  Okay, so I thought they were “pilot fish” for the Sycorax in the last XMas special, but here they were again under Racnoss control.  I wonder if they had any relation to the Sycorax at all now.

Anyway it as a good episode, and the basis for quite possibly the best companion of Tennant’s run.

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There is a lot to unpack here, and I’m sure I’m not going to get to everything.  I’ll touch on things I think to.

So firstly we have a cameo by Freema Agyeman in Army of Ghosts.

The television commercial for a product people can use to polish their “ghost” was comical, as were some of those other ghost things on the tele.  I had forgotten whether any of the ghosts were people or not, but nope it was all Cybermen, which is just creepy.

When Mickey says he can only take one person back with his dimensional button, it kind of seemed stupid after we just saw the Doctor get popped between dimensions with Mickey’s friend.  @corneliariggar made a good point about former companions being sucked into the portal, but I think maybe what they were going for was anyone who had crossed dimensions already and had been through the void would get sucked in, not necessarily all time-travelers.  It doesn’t explain the TARDIS not getting sucked in, exactly.  Going along with that I’d say the other dimension having its own Torchwood wouldn’t be too far-fetched.

I liked the scene where the Doctor talked about having the moral high-ground because he doesn’t have weapons while people are pointing guns at him.  I also really liked the banter between the Daleks and the Cybermen about only needing one Dalek to take out all of the Cybermen and that the Cybermen are better at one thing – dying.  These Daleks are spicy!  I guess I buy that Daleks can be that much more powerful than Cybermen.

The 3D glasses were a pretty iconic moment for the Tenth Doctor.  There is a Build-a-Bear workshop doll of the tenth Doctor complete with them.  I like that it became a thing without being overdone kind of like the fez was with the Eleventh Doctor.

I was admittedly worried Rose was going to be sent to whatever hellish existence the Cybermen and Daleks were being sent to.  And then boop, Pete arrived to save her.  I can’t remember how all of this stuff shakes out!  I did feel like it was an abrupt end to the Rose era, though she was able to travel a couple countries over to Norway or whatever to catch hologram Doctor and that was pretty fitting.  Of course I know this isn’t the last we see of Rose, but it was fitting as far as the main chronology goes.

I guess if we’re being technical this wasn’t the last episode of the season.  But in a way it wrapped up two seasons of Rose and her family.  It is fitting (there I go using that word again.) that Rose might get a job with Torchwood instead of going back to working at the shop as she used to.

Final thoughts…  I would say this was a pretty good finale, and that mostly the two-parters shined in season 2.  I have said for a while now that the actors who play the Doctor usually improve with time in the role, and based off of my memory that was the case with David Tennant.  I’ll find out whether that still holds true when I rewatch season 3, 4 and the specials.  That said there is an undeniable charm that season 2 had, an all-around fun feeling that made it a bit lighter than some of the other seasons.  That’s even with some of those intense episodes where the TARDIS was lost and the odds seemed stacked against the Doctor.

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I watched Fear Her, which again doesn’t have its own thread, so I will discuss it here.

At first I wanted to write this episode off as being one of the weakest in the season, and it is certainly one of several season 2 episodes I didn’t have any recollection of.  But there was some charm to it, and I didn’t think it was a bad episode.

Well to start this episode revolves around the 2012 Olympics in London, which actually did happen.  Most of the episode takes place right in a little neighborhood where kids have been going missing.  The culprit is a little girl named Chloe, who can draw people that she sees outside of her window and make them vanish into thin air.  Of course the true antagonist in the episode is an alien being who has taken control of Chloe, because it was lonely when it got separated from its millions of brothers and sisters after its ship became stuck in fresh pavement.

I think one of my favorite parts of the episode was when Chloe started scribbling on a sheet of paper out of anger, and the scribble came to life and attacked Rose.  It’s weird that typically things Chloe draws go missing, and the scribble did the opposite, but I still accept it as a valid result lol.  That scene was key for the Doctor and Rose to study the scribble and find out that it was made of graphite, and to narrow down who was responsible for the disappearances.

There is a thread in the story that Chloe’s deceased father was abusive, and she ended up drawing the father in a large doodle in her closet.  The father becomes a manifestation of Chloe’s fears, attempting to come back to life whenever all of the other drawn people become successfully restored.  After the Doctor and the TARDIS become trapped in doodle land, the Doctor manages to draw a picture of his own to help Rose, and I keep thinking it might have been a wild story all on its own for the Doctor to be able to find a way to do that.

The key to recharging the spaceship is to get it close to the Olympic torch whenever the runner comes by the house.  I thought it was a bit of a stretch that it had enough energy already to fly toward the torch when Rose threw it.  The runner gets tired and can’t go on, and I can’t help thinking that in some small way that might be due to having to carry the spaceship on top of the torch.  It was more fun times when the Doctor himself steps in to carry the torch the rest of the way to the cauldron.

Can I just say that Chloe’s mom seemed worthless for most of this episode?  I get she helped out with the singing to calm Chloe and her nightmare of her dad, but the rest of the time she was either a roadblock of denial or else too passive and dismissive about everything.  I think that negative energy was balanced out by the asphalt guy being so darn proud of his work on the torch’s path through the neighborhood.

Lastly, Rose got to save the day in this episode, while the Doctor was incapacitated.  And Fear Her sets up for the season 2 finale by suggesting that something could come between the Doctor and Rose, and that a “storm is coming.”

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So this episode actually has a thread, I’m guessing because RTD wrote it.  I see that opinions on this episode were pretty mixed with you guys, with lots of criticism.

I liked Love and Monsters, if just because I found the change in perspective to Elton refreshing.  It’s fun knowing the Doctor and Rose are going on all of these adventures beyond what we see in the episodes, and that outside people catch glimpses of what’s going on here and there.  I liked the delivery and how it was almost like this Youtube video that Elton was putting together.

The villain reminded me of Fat Bastard, in looks and behavior.  I am guessing the reason he didn’t want anyone to touch him in human form is because he would have started absorbing them in front of everyone?  Really all of team LINDA except for Elton met a pretty gruesome fate – even in this smaller episode we had a lot of character deaths.  I feel mixed about how Ursala wound up.  I guess the Doctor thought he could still save her and that a happy life was salvageable for Elton and Ursala despite the circumstances.

The Jackie scenes were funny to watch, and it did show a layer of loneliness about the character and that maybe is heightened because Rose is always off and leaving her alone back home.  I thought it was funny that Jackie basically initiated conversation and did most of the work for Elton letting him in close.  This episode also had the Scooby Doo door chase thing going on with the meat-eating monster, and that was entertaining.  Hopefully Rose got the right colored water to douse it with the second time!

I would rate it as one of the better episodes in the second season, personally.  It is at least one of the better one-off episodes from season 2.  I will say that the ELO did get to me after a bit, but it was fine.  One of the happier moments of the episode was the group jamming out together and finding things they all had in common.  The episode really did have a dark ending despite being so happy.

I reckon when I get around to watching the next episode I will have to post about that on this thread also.  But final thoughts?  From my memory there weren’t too many episodes like this one, and I thought we still saw a fair bit of the Doctor and Rose despite them not being the main focus of the episode.  It is kind of similar to how Blink is, and that episode definitely got a lot of praise.  I think you’re being too harsh on the episode if you’re looking for the deeper meaning of fandom or whatever, or at least I didn’t really take it that way so much.  Ah well, til the next episode…

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@blenkinsopthebrave I had never heard of the Whomobile, and it’s one of those things I’m kind of glad didn’t stick, lol.  I guess every fandom has some short-lived thing like that though.  At least the cool stuff caught on, like the sonic screwdriver.

@devilishrobby I guess we have James Bond to thank for some of the more experimental improvements to Doctor Who!

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So imagine my surprise to discover that The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit don’t have a thread, either.  Jeebus.  We’re going on 5 episodes straight with no thread of their own.  Anyway I am going to bombard this thread one more time to talk about those episodes.

First of all it really is a crime that neither one of these has a thread because these were pretty good episodes.  Right from the start the TARDIS is lost, and trouble is brewing aboard a planet that is miraculously orbiting a black hole.  What I like about the crew in this episode is that each one of the team members has their role and purpose, and they fulfill that role during the episode.

This is the introduction of the Ood, which some of you might know is my favorite Doctor Who creature.  I am really glad this isn’t the last we see of the Ood, but for the episode they provide a frightening army for the Beast.  It’s interesting that the Ood communicate with each other telepathically, and that is one fact I didn’t remember.  Really these monsters needed more explanation outside of their initial appearance as a servant race.

It was fitting that the first episode concluded with the mysterious “trapdoor” opening, and the second dealt with the Beast and the survival of the crew.  I think it was bold of DW to do an episode centered around the Devil, but they also kept things objective and open to interpretation which was good.  Was it the Devil?  Was it some evil alien being?  The answer is a resounding maybe, and it never steps on the toes of any religion or viewpoint in tackling the subject matter.

Toby was almost certainly dead after being confronted early in the episode.  One does not stand out in the vacuum of space without a suit, and then nonchalantly resume normal living after a short while.  But it’s good that they kept it vague as to whether he had been temporarily possessed for much of the episode, so you still think there’s a chance he can be saved.  As with many two-parters there are quite a few character deaths in this one, and the crew becomes whittled down over the course of the episodes.

I think, looking at the episode while having aged quite a bit since the first time I watched it, and having watched so many episodes recently, I can say that series 2 of the show cranked up the anxiety quite a bit.  A few episodes ago we had the TARDIS stop functioning and drop into an alternate dimension it almost couldn’t get out of.  In this episode the TARDIS falls into a deep pit in a location well beyond a locked gateway.  (Still not entirely sure how, but it is the TARDIS, so maybe it makes sense.)

The chances for characters to survive or die are at all-time-high stakes in many episodes of this season as well.  We barely had everyone make it through an overnight Cybermen upgrade-spree, and here characters are with 55 minutes of oxygen and no way back to the ship.  At every turn, these episodes have become more frantic, with the odds stacked against our heroes tenfold.  Or maybe it is about the same as it was in series 1 and I am just absorbing too much DW to be able to give an unbiased thought on that right now.

I will say that the show gets really good at knowing what emotion it is going for from episode to episode.  The Satan Pit is not going for the same thing as The Idiot’s Lantern, and tonally the show adjusts to really give you that new-story-of-the-week feel.  Maybe series 1 had a more cohesive arc and episodes that circled back around to earlier plot points, but series 2 is a bit more varied with its stories, and a little open-ended with some of them.  The Torchwood connection between episodes seems to be a little more on-the-nose than the Bad Wolf stuff in the first series, but I think because the show is kind of ambiguous about it that just makes us want to know more about Torchwood and how they fit into the Whoniverse.

Anyway, final thoughts.  I thought it was clever that the Beast separated its mind from its body and tried to escape the impossible planet that way.  I liked everything right on down to the Doctor’s solution to destroy the vase so that the Beast would be drawn into the black hole as a safety measure.  I’m not sure how much better this makes sense than televisions being used to suck people’s faces off, but the logic works well enough for me.

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I just watched The Idiot’s Lantern, episode 7 of season 2.  I’ll post my rewatch thoughts here since it has no thread.

This one’s going to be short and simple, since I feel like this was very much a filler episode.  I thought it was a fun episode, especially since the Doctor and Rose dressed up like they were from the 50’s.  There was a lot of use of psychic paper in this one.

I keep noticing I have issue with these episodes where, even though it is DW, the logic behind things is just too farfetched.  In this case The Wire uses television sets to “feed” off of people while they’re at home watching the TV.  The resulting faceless appearance of characters is kind of spooky, but it really just makes me more concerned people are going to die from starvation or the inability to breathe than anything else.

In the end I was happy jerk-dad got the boot, but also that Tommy kept his relationship with his father.  The Coronation Ceremony seemed fitting given the Queen’s recent death, so I guess that made the episode feel more topical on my rewatch.  Really this is one of those episodes I had mostly forgotten about, and probably only watched once well over a decade ago.  I notice that season 2 is really at its best with the bigger two-part episodes, while a lot of these smaller episodes don’t feel as fulfilling as some of the stand-alone season 1 episodes.

Well I think there is finally a thread for the next two episodes, so I can stop posting on this one for now.

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So I am also going to post a rewatch entry for Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel here, since they have no thread.  (Why?)  This will be quick since it is late.

The episode begins with the TARDIS falling into another dimension, and going cold.  It’s never really explained what caused this, but I have to wonder if it had anything to do with Mickey still holding in that button for so long.  The alternate dimension is London but a parallel version of it, where Rose was never born and her dad is still alive.

Big villain guy who becomes the Cyber Controller is clearly wanting to make the cyber upgrade a thing because he’s dying and wants to live on in a metal body.  It’s unclear why he is putting the upgrade off, but probably because he doesn’t actually want to go through with it.

It was a smart decision to make ear pods the device used to control hordes of people, and it fits right in with modern society.  Actually that plot point might have been ahead of its time, since wireless ear pods became a bigger thing well after 2006.  I’ll overlook that so much of this episode dumbed down how complicated computers are and glided over the way that kind of stuff works.

Mickey had a lot of growth in this episode, and ultimately made the decision to stay in the parallel dimension.  I have to wonder if he thought to liberate Paris next because that’s kind of where the group went in the previous episode, so maybe it was still fresh on his mind.  We also got a lot more back story for the character, and saw that parallel versions of people can interact no problem, as opposed to the same person from different points in time.

That whole scene where the Doctor and Mrs. Moore are squeezing through the underground tunnel filled with Cybermen is nightmare fuel.

It was smart to get the Cyberman to destroy the transmitter on the blimp by punching it.  I think Rose and Pete had the worst shot at making it through since they basically just put themselves in a line for the upgrade.  This show gives me enough anxiety!  But seeing Lumic pursue everyone up the ladder to the blimp gave me even more since now heights were involved.

Obviously this was a pretty big episode for Mickey, but it also really kicks off the parallel world arc that comes back into play later.  I still think Cybermen are creepier than Daleks.  And the CGI in this episode kind of grew on me, showing the tools whirring about that supposedly make a person into a Cyberman – it was just too cute, I guess.

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@dentarthurdent I suspected Jackie was dating the man she borrowed the truck from, or at least it seemed that way when I watched it.  I think by the time of the Christmas Invasion she is dating some other guy though, and she lent the Doctor his pajamas.

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I usually don’t like the episodes set in old times as much, but I guess this one circumvents that a little by having the Doctor and crew go to the future and travel through doorways back and forth to the past.

The clockworks were a cool-looking villain outside of their costumes, but I don’t think you could write too many interesting stories with them since they basically fulfill whatever they were programmed to do.

I’m not sure how many times the Doctor does this mind-reading thing with other characters during the series, but I think this is the first time we witness it in the revived series.  (Unless you count Gwyenth reading his mind with psychic powers, or any of the other people who are psychic or who are fed information about the Doctor and know he is a time lord in real-time.)  It’s one of those things I want to be on the lookout for now, but I suspect it happens so rarely I might forget I was even watching for it to happen.

This being Mickey’s first adventure on the TARDIS, he and Rose really don’t get up to a whole lot aboard the ship, with the Doctor going in and out of the time doors.  I enjoyed the idea of the Doctor visiting the Madam at different stages of her life, and it was fun to see the Doctor have this sort of short-lived romance over a couple of meetings.  It was sad that he never got to take her on a trip as he’d planned, and by the time he came back she’d died at 43.

A lot wasn’t explained about the space station or why it had robots programmed to kill off staff to get more parts for the ship, or why it malfunctioned and went after the Madam for its brain because the ship was named for her.  I’m not so sure what the ship would have even done had it gotten that brain.  Anyway, that is about all I have to say about the episode.

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So now I will talk about episode S2 E3 School Reunion here, because there is no thread for it.

I get that this isn’t a bigger episode, but I think it deserves some praise for bringing back Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, if nothing else.  It served as a backdoor pilot for the Sarah Jane Adventures, or else a cross-over of some sort if that was already airing at the time this episode came about.  I think the plot of the episode was kind of lame, involving the bat creatures that take the best parts of other beings they conquer wanting to reshape reality or whatever using the school kids.

What I think the best part of this episode was, was showing how Sarah Jane felt after losing contact with the Doctor years ago, how the Doctor feels in regards to his human companions who age much quicker, and how Rose felt seeing the Doctor interact with a former companion.  These are questions that the greater Who fandom probably wanted some answers to before this episode came along, and they got them.

K-9 pretty much saved the day, and this is the point where Mickey pretty much becomes an official companion, at least for a little while.  I thought it was fun seeing the Doctor act as a teacher and Rose act as a school lunch lady.  I guess that is about all I have to say about School Reunion, but it probably deserves a bit more credit than it got.

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@dentarthurdent I’m getting through as many episodes as I can, but I had the benefit of it being the weekend and me being free to binge a great lot of episodes over the past few days.  That will likely slow.  And I’m not so sure I’ll get the opportunity to chew through so much Who on other weekends.

I think I was determined to watch through the first series because it brought back a lot of nostalgia, and many of those episodes I had only seen a time or two over a decade ago.  Certainly watching the tenth Doctor’s adventures is great because he was kind of my favorite Doctor, but I tend to think most of the Doctors get better as their time in the role continues, and I think he improved a lot following the second series.

I had no memory of that part where Mickey and Jackie tried to help Rose get the TARDIS console open with first Mickey’s car and then the industrial tow truck.  So that was another thing I had fun piecing back together to remember how Rose entered that Bad Wolf state again to begin with.  Going off of memory I didn’t even remember the Doctor sending Rose away, so I only remembered her being there on the station the whole time.  In a way it is cool that Mickey and Jackie got to play some role in saving the day for that episode.

Well, hopefully I can keep finding constructive things to say about the episodes as I watch them.  For now I am commenting on every episode, but I guess it depends on my mood and my well-being if I keep this up, lol.

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So I had completely forgotten this episode was a thing, and probably only watched it once back in 2010, and not again until just now.

The opening scene felt like something out of an action movie, with the monks fighting the master of the house and taking it from him.

I actually enjoyed Rose and the Doctor waiting for Queen Victoria to say she wasn’t amused.  I thought the episode did have some plot holes, and I did find myself wishing they would have gone to the year they originally had intended.

This episode had a lot of running up stairs.

The part with the mistletoe having an effect on the werewolf to prevent it from getting close was cool.  Even more cool was the way they got rid of the werewolf using the not-telescope and the diamond.  My question is, so they just defeated the werewolf but there are still monks with guns waiting outside of the estate, right?  Did they just give up?

Mostly this episode served to show the founding of Torchwood.

So the next episode, School Reunion, is the first episode in the new series that has no thread.  I remember not liking that episode as much, but it has been ages so I don’t know what I’ll think of it this go around.  I might just post my rewatch thoughts on that episode here if I feel like I need to say anything.

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The 10th forever makes a good point, it is always good to see The Face of Boe in an episode.  New Earth also aims to be this companion episode to The End of the World, and while it isn’t quite as good as that episode it does have a lot of memorable moments.  In particular, Cassandra body-hopping between Rose and the Doctor.

I feel like Tenth Doctor episodes usually deal with the Doctor wanting to save as many lives as possible, and this one is no exception.  The problem is that the solution is so obvious – just give some of those vaccines to the sick people and they’re good as new.

Whenever Cassandra did the body hop thing I’ll admit I was concerned because where did Rose “go”?  And I didn’t remember Cassandra could just go from person to person all willy-nilly.  The ending was a little sad, I remember from seeing it ages ago, but at least Cassandra got to go out complimenting herself.  You know it occurred to me it seemed a little sudden how quickly this episode came up, and that Cassandra is over and done with – her two episodes left an impact on the brain of this Whovian years ago.

Really a fun and campy little episode more than anything.  Right down to the sanitizing elevators and Cassandra body snatching.  And I guess you can cure a bajillion infected people with the amount of vaccines poured into a single bucket.

@phaseshift thanks for sharing that Tardisode.  It’s funny how they take the time to make stuff like that and then just let it go by the wayside.

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One of the first things I noticed was how much damage was being done to Jackie and Rose’s house in this episode.  First a spinning tree saws through their doorway, then all of the glass in all of the apartments gets blown out of the windows when the Sycorax ship enters the skies.  It would be interesting to see if this is commented on in the next episode where the they spend any amount of time back at her home.

The Doctor spends half or 2/3rds of the episode resting post-regeneration.  He only really comes back late in the episode after Rose is sentenced to death by the angry Sycorax.  I like that tea was the catalyst for this.  Rose made a pretty good attempt at warding off the Sycorax by mentioning the Shadow Proclamation, the name for the Slitheen race I am not going to even attempt to type, and the Daleks among other things.  If you listen to it she tried to get it really close to one of the Doctor’s warnings to threatening alien beings, before tapiring off and just naming stuff.

They never really explained what those Santas were, but they sure didn’t look like Sycorax.  Everyone being controlled by the blood control was still pretty frightening, even if it ultimately wouldn’t have worked and was more of a scare tactic by the Sycorax.  They have whips that electrocute people and leave a pile of steaming bones so I’m not gonna say they don’t mean business.

What I think the main point of this episode was, was to show David Tennant sword fighting.  They wanted the Scottish Doctor to go all Highlander for his first order of business.  The hand getting cut off would eventually carry meaning later in the Tenth Doctor’s run, as well as in Torchwood, but luckily he was still regenerating and was able to get a new hand – it would have been an awkward couple of years otherwise.

But I think the scene that is probably most memorable from this episode is the Prime Minister ordering Torchwood to destroy the Sycorax ship, and the Doctor’s question about whether the PM looks tired.  Okay, if we’re being honest I can see Harriet Jones’ point of view as well as I can the Doctor’s here.  And the ash falling like snow was also pretty memorable.  All in all a pretty good episode, but maybe not as big of a first episode for a Doctor as the Ninth or Eleventh Doctors’ firsts.

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This episode started off pretty cool with the Doctor and Jack swooping in through the Dalek fleet and raising their shields, and then rescuing Rose straight away.  The introduction of the Emperor Dalek and revelation that it survived and created new Daleks from humanity’s criminals was something, but then it might have made more sense if the people who lost the reality shows were the ones sent to become Daleks.

A lot of people died in the episode.  The background characters, the temporary companion Lynda, all of the people down on floor zero, a lot of people down on Earth and even Captain Jack for a while there.  Most of the episode got pretty dark with the Doctor planning on launching the Delta Wave, which would kill all sentient life nearby and on Earth, and to be honest by the end of the episode most of those people had died anyway due to the Daleks bombing Earth and infiltrating the space station.

The Doctor tricking Rose and sending her away is something the viewer can kind of see both sides of.  Fortunately Rose notices things aren’t all wrapped up nice and neat and there is still the matter of the Bad Wolf messages.  And, fortunately Mickey and Jackie are determined to help Rose get the console open on the TARDIS so she can stare into its heart.  I’m still not certain I know what Bad Wolf meant after watching the episode again, but it was just about the only sort of plot device that could have wrapped up the situation for the best possible outcome.

The way I see it, Rose and Bad Wolf saved the Doctor, saved Jack, saved the adventures of Rose and the Doctor, and possibly saved people on the space station (in the game shows) and maybe down on Earth if any were still left.  I liked that the way the Doctor had to save Rose was to kiss her to absorb the energy of the time vortex, and that this ultimately led to the conclusion of the first season – the Doctor regenerating from Nine into Ten.

This regeneration scene was quick, but it gave Nine the time to really sum things up well.  Rose was fantastic.  He was fantastic.  And it truly was the end of the beginning.

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I liked that, similarly to how Boom Town went back to the Rift plot from the earlier Cardiff episode, this episode went back to the news station from several episodes before.  It is disappointing that humanity hadn’t progressed much since the episode set 100 years prior there, but for some reason the reality show tie-ins really worked to make for a fun first-parter to the season finale.

Lynda made a likable companion for the Doctor, but more on that on the next episode.  The game shows were all fitting for the characters who wound up in them, especially Jack in the makeover show.  I noticed he kept the new clothes too, lol.  It’s cool they got the Weakest Link lady to actually voice the Anne Droid, I didn’t know that when I watched it, but then that show was never as popular here in the US.

I feel like I’ve got to reserve a lot of what I want to say for the next episode.  But the Doctor’s promise to save Rose and stop the Daleks was a pretty cool moment.

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I guess I liked this episode a bit more than the two earlier Slitheen episodes.  As I wrote about in my rewatch for those, though, I am not sure how this one Slitheen even managed to survive that episode and it was never really touched upon.

I liked that this episode had a lot of lighter, fun moments between the Doctor and his companions.  Even Mickey got to feel like part of the group while they were having lunch and chasing after the lone Slitheen.

As many others noted the scenes between the Doctor and the Slitheen were among the best in the episode.  The episode also seems to be where Mickey and Rose’s relationship breaks down.  It was cool that Boom Town also referenced the Rift and the events from the third episode of the season, with the Gelth.

While I’m not sure whether the Slitheen was ever quite brought to justice, I thought it was cool having her turned into an egg to be given another shot at life.  I think it raises more questions for me about the TARDIS and the extent of its powers, but it is a time machine so maybe it could reverse the age of someone like that.

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I forgot most of what actually happened in these two episodes.  Jack had sophisticated technology from the start, and Jack was also responsible for what happened in the episode because he dropped the vehicle with the nano bots that were unfamiliar with what a human is supposed to look like.

A good portion of the episodes were flirting, but it was refreshing to have the angle with Nancy where she was trying to scavenge for food for the children while families left their homes during the air raids.  It should have been more clear than it was to me, but I also forgot that Nancy was actually the “mummy”.

After so many episodes where supporting characters died, it was refreshing to have one where everything was resolved and nobody was left in that horrifying state.  Also the Sonic Blaster and tractor beam was pretty cool.  For being a con man, Captain Jack did alright by Rose and the Doctor and saved them on a couple of occasions there, and it was nice to see them return the favor.

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