Who

Last Saturday saw the return to the small screen or idiot's lantern of Doctor Who. We last saw the Doctor and his sidekick, Rose, in The Christmas Invasion, which was a fabulous story, heartwarming, something of a tear-jerker and full on sci-fi. It was also David Tennant's first proper outing as the new face of The Doctor. He filled the rôle rather well.

Little known fact: David Tennant was born in Bathgate, West Lothian, the next town to Armadale, where I used to live. My dentist was in Bathgate. I could have actually trod where David planted his own footsteps!

The first episode of this new season had a lot to live up to. I'm not sure that it succeeded.

One could easily tell the story, New Earth, was written by Russell T Davies. He's very full of himself, so, naturally, a story written by him would be the one to start the new series. It was full of smut, silly moments of comedy and some aspects of the story were quite ridiculous. For example, people were cured by being doused in a few bags of IV fluids. Perhaps you needed to see it...!? The Doctor had previously commented that these human lab rats were infected with every known disease (I'm paraphrasing), all one thousand of them. He called for the IV drip bad "cures" in order to douse the poor afflicted people. Did he have one thousand bags? No, of course he didn't. Perhaps I'm being too pedantic.

The show was trailered with an evil race of cat women. The cat women were in fact not very evil at all, and the story really didn't have much to do with them. However, Cassandra "Moisturise me, moisturise me," was there, as camp and as fabulous as ever, as played by Zoë Wanamaker.

The special effects were fabulous, though, and the plot did move at a cracking pace. Perhaps too fast, though. Someone died at the end (I'm not saying, in case you haven't seen it) and they seemed to suddenly accept death for no reason at all.

Still, it was nice to see that all the bad people aren't all bad, all of the time.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but Billie Piper really makes the show. She's fabulous.

For reviews by other people (and they're a lot better than I can manage), please look at Gallifrey One and Gaywhovians.

There's a lot to look forward to this year, including the return of the Cybermen and an episode written by The League Of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss. It's just going to get better and better.

Don't think I hated New Earth. I didn't. And my view is probably tainted by my dislike for Russell T Davies. Watch Doctor Who. Go on, you know you want to. It's fabulous.