Carnivorous Vulgaris

That's a really good review, Mark. Your points about Davies' last gesture on the programme being the resurrection/reintroduction of the Time Lords and Gallifrey makes sense and it's probably something that Davies is building towards. I don't think that he'd have introduced something as drastic as the destruction of Gallifrey without planning how he can bring it back at some point. I'd love to see it happen anyways although having seen The Deadly Assassin I hope the Time Lords assume a more austere, alien significance.

Question for all Who-obsessives here (it's probably a very stupid one, but bear with me): In retrospect, was the cancellation of the series back in 89 (or 86?) the best thing that could have happened to the programme? Before anyone leaps in with "Yes", do you think there was potential for whoever took over after Cartmel/McCoy to make the series great again without taking the show off-air? I ask because, as riddled with faults as they might be, one or two of the storylines from the McCoy era were interesting...

See, despite the pelters that it's getting here, I'll definitely watch this movie.

1. It's got Will Smith - I like Will Smith: I think he's good actor, and he can carry a movie as long as he doesn't overdo the "hey I'm Will Smith and I'm really cool" thing. It's unfashionable, I know, but I enjoy his movies (well, maybe not Wild Wild West, but most of them)

He's an underrated actor. That's not "underrated" in the sense that he should be sweeping awards and plaudits left, right and centre but in the sense that he can lend a certain degree of watchability to even the most inane blockbuster that he crops up in. It's a charisma thing. Plus, he gave a great performance in Ali (which you should check out, btw)

Absolutely - while it's impossible to fairly judge the production values, the audio versions alone make it clear that they're easily the two best scripts ever written for the Daleks, even allowing for the extremely dodgy science of Evil.... Only two other stories even come close, for me - The Daleks is worth mentioning for historical value alone, and as an introduction to the Daleks themselves it still stands up well, but after a decent opening the later parts drag on forever, and the "The Doctor meets a group of committed pacifists, and demonstrates to them how wrong they are" subtext is more than a little dodgy. Genesis would be a candidate if it wasn't far too long and riddled with glaring plot holes (a 4-part version, focused entirely around Mad Old Tom's interactions with Davros and devoid of clams, repetitive running-from-one-city-to-the-other-and-back-again sequences, and Time Rings, would be every bit as good as lots of people seem to think the existing version is).

I picked up on the suspect "pacifists are fools" aspect of The Daleks serial when watching it with Kilyth and I also found it rather distasteful that the screenwriter's (Nation?) idea of a peaceful, perfect, idealistic society was seemingly exclusively populated by Aryans. I suppose sensitivies to that sort of thing weren't as well developed in the 60s as they are now.

Season 29 - McCoy's last season in 1989 was the 26th, so Eccleston's year was Season 27. If you're a huge nerd like me.

Ah, right. I'm making an effort to refer to the show in those terms (ie: taking the Classic Series into account when considering seasons) so thanks. NERDS .Root(16) EVER!!!

I won't be seeing Voyage Of The Damned until tomorrow, so I can't comment about that specifcally, but I generally agree with your take on RTD as a writer (as a producer, I still think he's generally excellent, although I still have my doubts regarding his abilities to orchestrate an ongoing plot strand significantly more complex than "a random character says a particular word once per episode"). He's very good at characterisation, has a nice ear for humorous dialogue, can't plot to save his life, and seems to think he's a lot cleverer than he actually is. To be fair, though, Last Of The Time Lords is the only one of his scripts I've genuinely despised since before the Season 2/28 finale, so even allowing for your negative review, I'm reserving judgement on VotD8 until I've actually seen it.

I might be going a little harder on it (VOTD) than I should be but seeing as it's the first dose of Who for a few months I think its faults stand out all the more conspicuously. If you'd asked me who would be a good choice to write a new series of Doctor Who before its return I'd probably have suggested someone like RTD, mainly because of the reasons you've mentioned. There's an interview with him in the Christmas edition of The New Statesman which is worth reading as he's a genuinely interesting man to read about but it does seem to confirm the fact that he considers himself to be, as you say, cleverer than he is. Basically I think his achievements are going to his head and, speaking from the point of view of his plots, he seems to confuse loud, grandiose random shit with genuine profundity and epic sweep. I'm grateful for the contribution he's made to the programme but his credibility as a writer is expiring quickly. I loved the finales to Seasons 27 and 28 but the Christmas episodes have been generally poor and, Utopia aside, the finale to Season 29 was a dreadful piece of television.

I don't dislike Hartnell's Doctor as much as you seem to (and it's worth pointing out that he does mellow considerably after Susan's departure, although given your impressions thus far, you're still unlikely to enjoy much of it - I'd recommend that you check out The Time Meddler, at the very least, though, if only because the first episode has two of my favourite laugh-out-loud Who moments, perfectly-delivered by Hartnell), but it's a reaction I can understand. At a guess, you'll like Troughton a lot more (he's my favourite Doctor), but you should be prepared for the fact that the vast, vast majority of his era no longer exists save as audio recordings. Also, his first season is a bit weak - there are two excellent stories (Power Of The Daleks and Evil Of The Daleks), but the rest are generally middling, with The Underwater Menace dropping down into "genuinely crap" territory (frustratingly, that's the first Troughton story from which an entire episode survives). His second season has a few more surviving serials, though, and aside from the final story, is absolutely sublime. Even in audio-only format, the exceptional quality of stories like Fury From The Deep and The Web Of Fear shines through.

It's such a shame about the lost episodes as I've heard so much about Troughton's era. The Dalek episodes in particular I'm looking forward to as they're apparently two of the absolutely definitive Dalek episodes with Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution Of The Daleks effectively ripping off their storylines, from what I've heard at least. Did you see that Blue Peter is offering a prize of a full, functioning Dalek model to anyone who can send them missing Doctor Who episodes in any format?

Yeah, I thought Razor was a real return to form for the series. Well, the end of Series 3 was brilliant but it's had its mis-steps, shall we say, before the concluding arc. The hybrid scenes in Razor were genuinely unsettling and horrific plus we got to explore more of the Pegasus' story and characters which was an avenue they should have ventured down long before now.

Voyage Of The Damned - Well, I'm not sure what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't an emasciated retread of The Poseidon Adventure (as directed by Michael Bay). I'm not sure if Russell T Davies is writing episodes now as some sort of impenetrable, high-minded exercise in satirising the dire condition of televisual entertainment but it certainly feels as if he's writing from behind a console of infernal machinery with individual components automatically writing each clichéd aspect of his scripts while he's cackling like he's overdosed on laughing gas screaming, "I am a screenwriting god!!!"

Sorry, but after the gut-wrenching let-down of Last Of The Time Lords, I was really looking forward to this episode to get the series back on track (Time Crash was great but doesn't really feel like part of the continuity to me). I still think Davies, when on form, is a terrific writer and he deserves endless plaudits for rejuvenating the show but I'm beginning to think it's time he moved aside just a little. Heaven knows, after the overall excellent standard of Series 3 (or is that Series 27? How many series have there been since the show started?), there are an abundance of writers who could be trusted to pen a gripping feature-length episode.

Kilyth's been steadily accumulating the entire series from The First Doctor onwards so I've consequently had the chance to catch a little bit of Hartnells tenure. An Unearthly Child pleasantly surprised me - the writing was a good deal more sophisticated than I had been led to believe a children's Saturday afternoon sci-fi programme from the 1960s would be. The companions are actually engaging and seem to possess a degree of intelligence. They're not just foils for The Doctor. I continued watching up to The Dalek Invasion Of Earth. What turned me away really was my dislike of Hartnell's performance. While there are certain aspects of his interpretation that I appreciate (the aloofness, the cold-heartedness and indifference to the welfare of those he considers secondary to his plans) there is really only so much I can take of his "Hmm, why, yes, well, Shut up you young fool!" schtick before it becomes predictable and tedious. I might come back to this era some time but for now I'm putting my immersion in the Classic Series on hold until we get a hold of Troughton's first series. Oh, yeah.

Welcome to the boards!

Yeah I loved Thirteenth Floor too. Also notable was the Doomlord strip. The last storyline of that character I loved was when aliens invaded Australia (cue gratuitous exclamations of "Strewth!" at every conceivable opportunity).

Oh, I've searched those avenues. This is the best synopsis of the tale I can find out there -

A plague had spread throughout the Earth, the only survivors were a handful of children and a few adults who had mutated into fearsome creatures. The strip followed one boy as he gradually contacted more of the surviving children. Quite a gripping tale...

Written by someone called D. Horton and illustrated by someone called Ortiz. As for back issues, they're hard to find, even on Ebay.

Don't know if anyone here was a reader of the monthly Eagle comic back in the late 80's/early 90's but there was a storyline in it called "Survival" that dealt with the eradication of all but a tiny fraction of the Earth's population by a virus and the story of a bunch of children struggling to survive after the catastrophe. It was astoundingly similar to 28 Days Later in many ways and I remember loving it at the time.

Does anyone remember this strip? Or is there anywhere you can download or buy old issues of the Eagle Monthly?

At least you're not making excuses for the Star Wars prequels...

;)

I have a close friend who does that. Fanatically defends them. It's infuriating because he has otherwise excellent taste in films.

Well, if Mark's not going to deconstruct that... episode... then I guess it's up to me...

Nah, I can't be bothered. Piffle from beginning to end. Will someone please stop feeding RTD crack?

Well put.

Even if Torchwood kept going, I've a strong suspicion that they'd still end up on the Who writing staff. RTD is effectively using Torchwood as a forum for blooding new writers and testing to see if they can write to the standard he wants for Who. What's likely to happen is that Torchwood will be cancelled in the next couple of years. I can't see many people putting up with it for much longer, especially with the characters they've got. Couple that with the fact that the lead character will probably regularly pop up in Who and I'd say Torchwood has a very limited shelf life.

No, sorry, I didn't explain that properly - Gwen's boyfriend thinks that the Cybermen invasion was the result of a drugged water supply causing people to hallucinate. This despite the TV footage, millions of deaths and the fact that everyone 'hallucinated' the same thing.

 

I know Who has a history of having the public ignore dinosaurs tromping through London and the like, but this was ridiculous...

You see, that, in a nutshell, is why I despise Torchwood. Completely ludicrous plotlines attempting to pass themselves off as serious drama. And it'll be to the detriment of the current series if the Torchwood writers start to gain promenance in the Doctor Who writing staff. At the moment RTD, Steven Moffatt and Paul Cornell are writing the outstanding material. Heaven help the show if Chris Chibnall (as much as I liked 42) or his like are given a serious run at the series.

I really liked the big 'invasion' in Army of Ghosts precisely because everyone seemed to be aware of the aliens and had incorporated them into ordinary life in a way that seemed brilliantly science-fictiony for new Who. But then he decided that he wanted to eat his cake and have it, so Torchwood introduced all that bollocks about terrorists drugging the water supply.

Yeah, for something like Daleks vs Cybermen I'd expect it to involve a massive conflict that the world at large would participate in. You'd almost feel cheated otherwise. But I think RTD detracts from the impact of having an alien invasion of Earth if it happens once or twice a series. I didn't see that Torchwood episode - they're fighting terrorists now? Oh dear...

Also I disagree heartily about Simm (loved every moment with him onscreen) and the family (glad that they were only used as plot devices, considering all the time that Jackie Tyler would've had - it also makes the possibility of them getting zapped that much higher).

Oh, I fully accept that it might just be a case of Simm not being to my tastes. As for the family, well we know nothing about them and that's most of the problem. If they were good, interesting characters I'd love to see them appear in the finale. If they're bad, poorly-written characters, I'd love to see them killed off. The problem is that almost no time has been devoted to exploring them as people. So at this point I couldn't care less if they were all exterminated.

Thanks for all the detailed responses to my Classic Series vs Current Series question! I'll try and reply in greater detail when I get a minute but lots of good points raised.

As for my impressions of The Sound Of Drums. Well, there are problems.

There's a couple of big faults. The first major gripe I have is

SPOILERS:

The Master's instruction to kill 10% of the world's population. Even with this being Doctor Who, I'd still prefer a little more realism and intimacy in the stories sometimes. From the RTD storylines, Earth in the 21st century has faced very public threats from the Slitheen, the two Christmas invasions, the Daleks and the Cybermen and have been publicly visited by the Judoon (was that their name). With all this going on, the human race should reasonably expect to be in a state of total paranoia and hysteria with neighbours killing one another on the basis of them being "aliens". Basically, RTD seems to have lost his self-control and thinks that a story can only be epic or heartfelt if it involves the whole world. As much as I loved Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday from Season 2, I'd much prefer it if the series followed the Ninth Doctor's observation in Rose that, "you humans think everything's fine, but there's a war going on right under your noses" (sic).

The other major complaint is that, for me, John Simm just isn't interesting enough or convincing enough to be The Master. In a lot of ways, we're almost unfortunate that we got to see Derek Jacobi perform the part last week. We saw a genuinely world-class actor portraying a version of The Master that was malevolent without being camp or pantomime-y. Simm seems to be approaching the show with the mindset of someone who considers themselves to be an intense, classically-trained actor who's now using Doctor Who as an opportunity to be silly and use all the dramatic tics that he would have been criticised for in drama school. I don't find him credible as a villain, put it that way.

As Mark said, the opening was a ridiculous waste of a potentially gripping cliffhanger. We always knew they were going to return to Earth of the present but it should have been harder than using the bloody sonic screwdriver to repair Jack's time vortex manipulator thingy.

Aside from those complaints the rest of the episode was good (even if the family were underused). I'll reserve final judgement until next week but at the moment it's more along the lines of The Shakespeare Code and Evolution Of The Daleks than the rest of the current season.

I've started watching some classic Doctor Who in the form of Tom Baker's first season recently. On top of this, I've also managed to catch The Sea Devils from John Pertwee's run, Remembrance Of The Daleks from McCoy's, The Doctor Who TV Movie from McGann's and Terror Of The Zygons, Planet Of Evil and Destiny Of The Daleks from later on in Baker's tenure. It's brought up a couple of questions that I hope some of the seasoned Whovians here can tackle for me.

Are there any of you here who believe that the current, Russell T Davies-incarnation of the show is inferior to the classic series? If so, can you tell me why? The main reason I ask is because the impression I get from reading some of the fan blogs on the net is that they think RTD is responsible for dmbing-down and infantilising the programme as well as essentially destroying the show's legacy. From what I've seen of the new series (which I love) and the old series (which I merely "like", I have to be honest) I can't see a reason why RTD has come in for so much criticism. That's not to say that the new series is without its faults. On the contrary, it's had some really terrible episodes and RTD's scripts have featured some bad mis-steps. But from what I can see RTD is basically responsible for resurrecting, never mind reinventing, the entire programme and lending it a sophistication and dramatic heart that the classic series can't seem to match.

Now, before anyone starts accusing me of heresy or anything, bear in mind that I've not seen an awful lot of the classic series. I'm aware that many people consider McCoy's era to be the nadir of the show (Remembrance is pretty shabby). But I can only report on what I've seen so far and most people talk of Baker's era as being the definitive era - the first season quite simply didn't turn out to be as good as it was billed to me. The terrible special effects aren't what bothers me (it was a BBC budget in the early 70's). The classic episodes I've seen are positively riddled with faults of a more serious nature -

a) The companions are handled almost as afterthoughts. We're typically given no background on them like we are with Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Martha Jones and Jack Harkness so it becomes harder to empathise with them and accept them as real characters. I realise that the companion's only real purpose is to vicariously ask the questions that the audience would ask of The Doctor but still...

b) Terry Nation could have done with a redraft of his Genesis and Destiny scripts. They're inherently great stories but the episodes are poorly paced and the impression I get from viewing them is that Nation doesn't want to bother much with exposition and just wants to rush to the action or interesting stuff very quickly.

SPOILER: After Davros is killed at the end of Genesis, we're given a pretty poor explanation for why he returns in Destiny. Something along the lines of, "Aha! After all these centuries, my life support system has come back on line! Just like I planned that it would!"

c) Some of the episodes are just clangers pure and simple. I still haven't fully recovered from the experience of watching Robot.

d) There's some pretty awful acting and directing throughout. The crossfades/montage of The Doctor's revelations of the future to Davros in Genesis is the kind of thing that The Simpsons would parody and also strikes me as being completely out of touch with the character - he'd never reveal anything to the Daleks that could potentially increase their power, not even if it meant the death of his friends.

I'd just like to point out that I don't dislike the classic series. It's full of great ideas and imagination, it's pretty dark in places and it's pretty exciting overall. But I don't see anything that justifies the reverence that some people hold it in. The only explanation I can think of why some people believe it to be superior to the present series is that the classic series, however silly it got, always took itself seriously. The new series does everything with a wink and a nod. At least, that's how I see it (Don't hate me, Mark!). Have I merely been watching the wrong episodes? If so, are there any classic series ones you'd recommend?

WHY??

 

Why can't they leave the families out of this?

 

I mean to say there's a whole universe and a massive timeline and almost all the threats have some tangential link to The Doctor's assistants?

 

Having said that (a) better family, and (b) better episode than the last few.

 

PS that sonic screwdriver must GO.

Companions families aren't necessarily detrimental to the story and I think it's been the right choice to focus at least some time on them. To be honest, most people watching the show and most people I know who watch it would no longer be willing to accept a companion who could just join The Doctor on his journeys without any reference to their family. If you want to make a companion believable, they have to be seen to have existed outside of the TARDIS. Obviously, Rose's family really grated up until the last episodes of Series Two but as you mentioned this family seems far more interesting - Mrs Jones seems like a woman genuinely concerned for her daughter's safety.

Thought that was the best episode of this season so far. Apart from Gatiss' sometimes hammish portrayal of Lazarus (hey, it's Who-villainy) I loved the dialogue (his speech about his memories of The Blitz), the direction and the pacing. It lost points for ripping the idea for its monster directly from forgotten 1997 horror The Relic (don't bother watching it) and the pointless ending.

But if the series continues in this fashion, I'll be a very happy guy.

Mind you, she did write for Torchwood, so we should have perhaps known better than to expect something great. Such potential wasted with this one, would have been a heck of a episode if Sec had just taken the worst of humanity and amplified it, heck it would have been a great episode if it was...I dunno, totally rewritten. As it is, its painfully average bordering on bad, and possibly the worst of Series 3 to date.

Just noticed that now.

I've invented a new game. If anyone wants to play along or contribute, please feel free. It's called :

How To Write For Torchwood

1) Assemble your cast of characters. Pick at least two from directly off the shelf in order to minimise annoyances like character development.

2) Think of an idea. Any crazy idea. Ensure it makes absolutely no sense at all. Now think of another three in the same fashion. (If you have trouble in this department, write some random nouns on the backs of slices of bread and take a walk to your local park. Feed the bread to the ducks. Whatever slices they don't eat will contain the words you'll need to construct your plot. Sample: Doctor - Solar - Manhattan - Doomsday - Mutant - Peace - Bollocks).

3) Pepper the first two acts of your script with as many cliches, plot holes and general stupidity as you like (It helps to recruit a team of chimpanzees to randomly hammer out phrases on a typewriter).

4) For act three, introduce all your crazy ideas in the space of two minutes of screen time thereby ensuring they lose all sense of coherence and consequence.

5) Never use intelligent, moving drama where histrionic melodrama will do. (Hint: It's best to write all your characters as exhibiting the maturity, intelligence and emotional stability of 15 year-olds in their first rush of hormones)

6) If you're writing for an established piece of work like an ongoing popular TV series, never be afraid to piss all over its themes, its inherent humanity, its intelligence, its scope and its humour. Disregard absolutely everything that doesn't match your grand plan.

Hey presto - instant Torchwood.

If it makes you feel any better, I found it coherent. And you pointed out all the gargantuan plot holes that I forgot to include in my review -

Sample Dalek/Doctor Exchange From Any Point In This Episode-

 

Dalek: "Oh look! It's The Doctor!"

Doctor: "Right! Come on! Kill me!"

Dalek: "I will be the one who kills our greatest enemy!"

Doctor: "Come on! Do it!"

Dalek: "Right! I will!"

Doctor: "Go on!"

<Insert DEM here>

Oh dearie, dearie me.

They screwed up the Daleks. How does one screw up the Daleks? Especially after a Part 1 that promised so much. Things aren't shaping up too well for this series, I'm afraid. Smith & Jones was quite good, The Shakespeare Code was a farce, Gridlock left me indifferent and only Daleks in Manhattan gripped me.

The Parts I Liked, Brian -

The Doctor's death wish (as mentioned here) was a good touch. For once I got a sense that he was so weary and despairing of his constant run-ins with the Daleks that he just wanted it to end. That no matter what he does there will always be another Dalek menace to face. You'd expect something like that to eventually tell on him and it does here.

The production values were great (even if the subterranean sections were surprisingly well-illuminated but let's not go there) and Martha's proving to be more useful and less teary than Rose. Resisting the urge to burst into tears at every other opportunity (as Miss Tyler was wont to do) is definitely one way to appease me.

Tennant's growing into the role. He's beginning to master seething, dreadful rage well and when he does boil over into histrionics he's at least better at it than he was previously.

That's Not So Good, Al -

Peace and love. A new start for a new breed of Daleks who want peace and love. Fuck off. I refuse to believe that an infusion of humanity would somehow erradicate aeons of Dalek instinct to hate and to destroy. For fuck's sake, the last time we saw Sec he was trying to exterminate all forms of life on Earth. How the fuck does one go from a genocidal mindset to "We just want to live in peace" in the space of a few episodes? Alright, we don't know how long the Daleks have been in Manhattan but surely not that much time (chronologically speaking) has elapsed between the Battle Of Canary Wharf and The Final Experiment.

Fans of Star Trek (or more accurately, fans who read www.jammersreviews.com) will be familiar with what Trekkies call "Fun With DNA". The term is a reference to the risible idea that DNA can be manipulated, spliced, mutated at will and can open up all sorts of possibilities for new characters/species etc. Unfortunately, Helen Raynor appears to have been infected with this particularly nasty little Sci-Fi bug. It's the biggest excuse for lazy writing since the introduction of the seemingly omnipotent Sonic Screwdriver. All you need to manipulate DNA, apparently, is a few tubes of melted Blue Mr Fizzy, a large metallic conductor and a few thousand volts of electricity. Oh, and if someone attaches themselves to the conductor when the electricity strikes, their DNA will be spliced into the hosts. I didn't know that. Did you? Isn't it amazing what utter tosh you learn every day?

Oh, I'm not going to bother to carry on. Acting was its usual crap in places. Solomon (a potentially interesting character) was killed off needlessly (even though Quarshie relayed him with all the character of a recently deceased halibut). I give the episode 4/10 for its scope and genuine interest to chart unexplored territory in respect to the Daleks and the Doctor. But what a cock-up.

Now, let's see if I can get in the first review of Daleks In Manhattan ;-)

All in all, I have to say it was a pretty good episode with some intruiging long-term possibilities while never stepping into outstanding territory. Raynor's script shows potential - I liked the premise of shining a light on a very dark period of humanity and in particular on a relatively unknown phenomenon like Hooversville. What didn't work here was some of the characterisation.

The kid (Frank?) had "Red Shirt" written all over him and it was only a matter of time before he was captured or killed.Solomon is an interesting character and I particularly liked his intimation to the Doctor that he, a veteran of the First World War, was terrified by the Pigmen and allowed Frank to be taken because of that. Could have been acted a little better but then that's a criticism that could be levelled at pretty much everyone in the series at various points. Tennants response to discovering the Daleks alive again was also handled well. The thousand yard stare after his explanation of who and what they were was pretty much what you'd expect to see in someone with his history. I didn't like his, "You ask them what they're up to, I don't want to be recognised!" comment to Martha. What, you don't want to be recognised by your eternal enemy so you're going to barely bother concealing yourself in a row of men while standing directly in front of the Cult of Skaro? Similarly, Martha's disruption of the musical number was just ridiculous, unfunny and gratuitous - purely included in the script so they could shoehorn in a "humorous" moment.

 

The possible ramifications of the Cult of Skaro's experiment are interesting. Not because I want to see the Daleks changed (like someone on this forum said; if it isn't a menacing pepperpot, it isn't a Dalek) but because it's a strategy in keeping with the Cult's philosophy. They were created in order to innovate and discover new ways for their race to survive. So even though they are fundamentally contradicting the Dalek imperative, they are fulfilling their duty. The idea of a Dalek/Human hybrid is one that I'm surprised the show hasn't happened upon earlier in its run (original series fans correct me if I'm wrong). For the record, I don't think this will mean a fundamental change to the Daleks but it could mean the introduction of a new species. I also liked the aspect of dissent within the Dalek ranks. It was believeable.

In summary, a good all-round episode that raises interesting questions for the future but is hamstrung by some of the faults we've come to expect from this series of Doctor Who.

Thought this episode was quite poor, to be honest. Principally because of the inescapable silliness of the villains. They weren't interesting, weren't funny, weren't original. Wasted opportunity, really.

On the plus side, I did like the continuing theme of "She fancies him/He doesn't even know there's something going on." And the casting of Shakespeare was pretty good. I can't remember the actor's name but he plays a great character in Shameless and I quite like him.

Hopefully Gridlock will mark an upturn in fortunes.

That's not to say RTD is above criticism but while I don't think anyone here has attacked him as much as the grown-up Star Wars fans have criticized George Lucas for not making the prequels the great dramas the original films were when they were 8, I think that RTD has done more good than bad in position that's pretty much thankless in terms of never being able to please every longtime Who fan.

Seconded. His writing has its faults but he's penned some classic episodes and his sense of character has always been strong.