Dr Who

^^^ On the good side, to add to those mentioned :

I'd add The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit : I thought that was pretty good overall.
"42" was also OK.

I'd like to second "The Waters of Mars" - I thought that was a really good episode for Tennant. If that had actually been his regeneration story at the end it would have been a whole lot more satisfying for me than the overstretched "End of Time".

The End of Time was spoiled by the Master teetering even more over into out and out parody and like the Stolen Earth there was a complete reliance on mumbo jumbo "prophecies " MacGuffins - "He will knock three times" ad nauseum (and from Dalek Khan in the latter, and also from an even more implausible "Time Lord Witch" character on Gallifrey in the End of Time -WTF? Since when did Time Lords have bloody "soothsayers"?.)

Also on the debit side : I'd agree with previous posts but also add New Earth (Cassandra again ! Aargh! Once was MORE than enough).
quite a lot of Series 3 for me was pretty forgettable.
"Runaway Bride, Smith and Jones, Gridlock" I could also do without. "Utopia" was pretty awful as well, it was like it just existed to bring back The Master right at the end, the rest of the "story" was meh imo.
And I felt the series really lost its way in Series 4. The Stolen Earth/Journey's End was trying far too hard to be the big climatic series finale and for me was just a mess.

Some of Tennant's stuff I feel was slightly hampered by the agenda of shoehorning all the peripheral Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures characters etc into the Dr Who canon : like Moffat's obsession with the comedy Sontaran/Lizard/human trio and Sherlock Holmes; I suspect RTD's heart by that time was really with the stuff that he personally created and not with the series as a whole.

I also feel Moffat pretty much writes the Doctor and Sherlock as the same character : which is a serious mistake imo. As others have noted - the Doctor ISN'T human.

I liked 42 because you knew there was a time limit to solve the problem - 42 minutes. It put more pressure on the story and enabled the cast to perform at a high level making for so much excitement there was hardly time to draw breath. Those are the stories that for me are when Doctor Who is at it's best - pressure on the Doctor, keeping the plot simple, not overcomplicating or making it overlong.

I'd agree 100% with your End of Time Parts 1 and 2 assessment - it was ok but the Master wasn't as effective as his other appearance with Tennant and the second part was dragged out for far too long - just so that Tennant could say goodbye to his former companions. By the time Matt Smith arrived at the end of that it turned in to an anti climax which sadly set the tone for most of Smith's tenure. Matt is a good actor but the plots have become far too childish and sadly Moffat shows little sign of letting up with the shit writing now that Capaldi is in the hot seat.

This episode makes me think of the Jimi Hendrix song '...Laughing Sam's Dice'

No throwing cigarette butts out the window
Now if you look to your right you'll see saturn
If you look to the left you'll see mars
I hope your brought your parachutes with you
Hey look out!
Look out for that door

Titanic in space ,now The Orient Express in space .
Earth's 20th century forms of then luxuary travel seem to be very popular in this future , don't they ? (Star Trek's hollo deck ,anyone ?)
66 seconds to live ? Coincidence a few previous posts mentioned the David Tennant 42 (mins) episode ? It's uncanny !
Quite a goodish plotline this time (only the victims can see their killer).
Thought Frank Skinner did okay as the onboard engineer .Although is parting scene was cringe .Oh no / yes Frank Skinner's going to be a regular .Then his script talked him out of the offer to stay as The Onboard engineer of the Tardis .
Here's a point none of the Doctors regular companions have come from the future since the re-launch , or from other worlds yet .
TB had Leela ,Romana and Nissa .
PD had Adric .
SMc had Ace .
Anyone think of anymore futuristic /alien regular companions ?

^^ K-9 was from Earth's future, on a space-station on Jupiter's moons.

Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury) with Patrick Troughton was a genius again from a space station in Earth's future.

Steven Taylor (Peter Purves) with William Hartnell was a spaceship pilot again from Earth's future.

These were all regulars in more than one story.

Alpha Centauri was a weird alien ambassador (looking unfortunately like a green rubber penis in a cloak with a large eye in the "bell end" head) who appeared in two separate Pertwee stories, both set on the planet Peladon.

I'm wondering why the BBC has ever bothered to make it a Saturday night flagship show Surely the ratings are suffering? I'm now beginning to agree with the idea that they should give it a break then come back in a year but instead of doing single episode stories they should go back to doing 70's style serials and spread them through out the year.

I cannot see the show surviving another year with Capaldi as the lead in trying to play a different side to the Doctor he has made him look like a bumbling fool but they shouldn't give it to a woman if they do decide to replace Capaldi.
I would very much like to see someone in the role who can give us a little bit of Ecclestone's & Tennant's Doctors back. Moffat has taken it to the point where the creativity and excitement and the moment of waiting for the monster to make it's first appearance has gone. To me I think the show would be better off being moved back to a tea time slot and they put 'Pointless' on it's current slot!! or worse still move the series onto BBC3 because at the moment that would be the best channel for it.

A massive improvement on last week Maybe the best one this year so far.

I liked Mummy on the Orient Express. Good acting especially from the guest stars even Frank Skinner wasn't too bad. Good scary story and I liked the period style countdown clock. PC acted the Doctor well in this one, Jenna excellent as always.

Poor points - Why have a room full of scientific experts but they didn't add anything to the story, only the Professor who had researched the Mummy. Why was the train wiggling so much it looked like a demented python!

Special mention for Clara's wardrobe - great cleavage shots of Jenna

I enjoyed this episode more than the others in the series but I suspect that was more to do with Clara's costume than anything else!