We get some additional mentions of how young Rose is, which always kind of throws me.

Yeah, I’ve never bought the whole “19 years old” thing.

i would guess getting the earth to destroy itself with its own weapons would skirt around any shadow proclamation rules outlawing their behaviour.

Damn that Prime Directive!

Faint praise, but this one’s a lot better than the first part of the story. The “farting” aspect of the farting aliens is significantly downplayed in favour of things that are actually interesting.

The emotional core of the story is the Doctor and Rose each coming to terms with how dangerous life with the Doctor is, and the effects it can have. I’d forgotten that Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North comments on how flippant Rose is about death, even at this early stage (too early?) of the series.

There are plot contrivances all over the place - the UK’s nuclear codes are controlled by the UN! You can hack the Royal Navy’s submarines and launch missiles from your home PC! But I’m pretty forgiving of stuff like that, as long as the emotional core of the episode is solid.

“I basically pitched the Doctor too quick but I did it in my very first episode and I’ve regretted it ever since!”

I…don’t disagree. Even by Doctor Who standards, Thirteen’s dialogue tended to fly by pretty quickly.

The writing really gets the era right here - mid 00s, 24hr news, a few years after 9/11, after a major event this is exactly what people would be doing.

Good point, and shame on me for not giving Trinity Wells the acknowledgement she deserves!

That quote is…really something. RTD has a habit of overexplaining things to the point of incomprehensibility, but that takes it to a new level.

I do think the basics of what he’s getting at ring true - they certainly struggled a bit with “how much sexism should the Thirteenth Doctor encounter,” and “how much racism should the Fifteenth Doctor encounter?” They both probably should have encountered more than they did, but if the story isn’t about that, you run the risk of derailing the entire story. But if you include it “casually,” as just a fact of the world, as they did in this case…that’s not necessarily better. But maybe it’s still worthwhile?

I don’t think there’s a right answer, but RTD sure managed to find a wrong one.

On this topic, I was certainly laughing right along with the show’s depiction of Mickey-as-a-murder-suspect, but that has unsettling racial implications on its own, if you really interrogate the idea.

Oh boy, it’s the one with the farting aliens.

I don’t care for this one at all. It’s a very pure expression of RTD’s “kid-friendly” vision of Doctor Who, but…it makes it kid-friendly by featuring farting aliens. No thanks.

But there’s still good stuff! Pretty much everything about Rose’s return is pretty great. Jackie’s anger and relief after Rose has been missing for a year, Mickey’s status as a suspected murderer, all good stuff. We get to meet Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who’s always a delight. We get to see UNIT, still with “United Nations” in their name. We also get to meet Toshiko Sato.

The broad strokes of the plot are interesting. A crashed UFO, faked by aliens not as a diversion, but as a trap for the council of Big Brains that would immediately convene. I like that a lot. I also liked the way the Doctor immediately drops his dismissiveness of Ricky Mickey as soon as he says something intelligent.

But at the end of the day, those farting aliens are always going to be there.

the story sacrifices all its complexity by making the Gelth generic evil monsters.

Oh, good call!

I didn’t really like the cgi, even considering it’s a couple decades old.

I was originally going to comment on how much I liked it…but then the humanoid Gelth showed up, and looked pretty awful.

But I did like the earlier, wispy stuff, which reminded me of old-school hand-drawn animation.

This one is pretty average. Not great, not bad?

It serves to establish the time travel rules for new viewers - the past can be changed! Just because you know what 2005 looks like, you shouldn’t assume it will look like that next time you visit.

The Doctor’s edginess continues, turning on a dime to snap at Charles Dickens (and eventually turning back to apologize), and making it clear that he’s perfectly willing to let the Gelth inhabit dead humans - it’s like recycling!

I don’t think the Gelth themselves hold together very well. They’re stated to be gaseous, but they act more like stereotypical “non-corporeal” life forms for the most part. But the climax hinges on them being “drawn out” by the gas from the gaslights, so I guess they’re attuned to that specific mixture, rather than a standard nitrogen/oxygen mix? Not really the sort of thing we should dwell on.

Of course, this episode also establishes the Cardiff rifts, and introduces us to Eve Myles, which will be important soon-ish.

It’s modern fandom, so…probably.

I didn’t have any problem with Omega’s appearance - his whole deal was that he could reshape his universe at will, so…sure, giant bone monster, why not?

How easily he was dispatched is another matter. It’s sort of what I expected from the episode, but still not exactly satisfying.

“There was plenty of fuss made about Winston Churchill being in Doctor Who, when there’s plenty of history to suggest he wasn’t such a good guy. And that’s always the way.”

He added: "Our history of slavery, our way of walking through the world is constantly being re-analysed. So I like to think it’s the same on Gallifrey… Omega has been re-contextualised, and the story gets bolder and changes over time.

“We don’t want to repeat the past, we want to push it forward.”

This seems like a very odd train of thought, though.

Deadline seems to have taken a much bleaker interpretation from the very same content:

‘Doctor Who’ Showrunner Casts More Doubt Over Series’ Future As UK Ratings Plummet: “We Don’t Know What’s Happening”

One thing that I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention about that “oh, hello” is that it’s another fourth-wall breaking moment, this time not from Mrs. Flood/The Rani. Does that mean anything? Who knows!

And there’s Susan, of course.

Good to hear he doesn’t seem to have abandoned that thread in the wake of the finale.

(I’m still wondering who Gus is, from Mummy on the Orient Express. Maybe they’re the same!)

Also good to hear he’s still a dedicated troll.

Speaking in this week’s issue of Doctor Who magazine, Davies wrote: "No, not the end, don’t be mad. Doctor Who will never end!

“There are pathways leading to potential futures – we’ve still got the mystery of that bright and blazing ending, ‘Oh, hello,’ yes indeed, hello Billie! And there’s Susan, of course.”

He went on: "I wonder if we’ll ever find out who the Boss is. Or who the Boss are. (I’m still wondering who Gus is, from Mummy on the Orient Express. Maybe they’re the same!)

“But we don’t know what’s happening yet, and while everyone works that out, I’ll take a pause on this page … Hopefully, we’ll have news soon, and certainly, The War Between the Land and the Sea is about to break out, so there are great things ahead. Until then.”

Stories included have not only been written by Tennant, Capaldi and Whittaker, but also by Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Chris Chibnall, Steven Moffat and Hugh Bonneville. In fact, there are more than 50 contributors.

Okay, this is kind of a nothing story, but…what an interesting “what if”…

All that money for “the Doctor walks through some fan blades”.

I…don’t really think this one is all that good?

I’m going to jump straight into something that I forgot to talk about last week: the Ninth Doctor himself. I’ve been trying to put my finger on what sets him apart from the others, and…for me, it’s his goofy aloofness. He’s at once extremely enthusiastic and slightly contemptuous of those around him, with an edge that definitely doesn’t carry forward to his successors. He certainly throws Rose into the deep end in this episode, dropping her far into the future, well after everyone she knows is dead and gone, just in time to (almost) watch her planet get destroyed by the sun.

There are really nice character bits throughout, like Raffalo the plumber and of course Jabe the tree lady. Lady Cassandra certainly is memorable.

The Doctor lets Cassandra dry out until she explodes in the end. Remember kids, the Doctor never does cruel things, and the more recent seasons have ruined everything!

Not the worst episode ever, but hardly the best. It continues to focus on Rose’s journey, and her reaction to exactly what it means to travel through time and space. It also continues to lay out the Doctor’s backstory in small drips.

Edit: Oh, and it’s sort of weird that they didn’t tie the Adherents of the Repeated Meme more directly into the Bad Wolf nonsense.

Noel Clarke - scandal noted - is quite good in a pretty thankless role.