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I found the radiation-in-the-shoe bit irritating, I'm afraid - I know that it is a little bit ridiculous to talk about what is credible in an episode where a hospital was transported to the Moon and an MRI machine could wipe out half the life on earth, but it felt a bit silly and mime-comedyish in a way that suspended belief for me rather. Also, I am starting to get a feeling that the most terrifying thing in the doctorverse are posh ladies of advancing years with somewhat sexual appetites - Cassandra, the Wire, Mrs Plasmavore - and that the climactic villain of this series will thus logically be the Daleks' horny mum.
Otherwise, though, I liked this a lot. Nice aliens, if a bit Hitchhikers, a quality turn by the plasmavore, Martha Jones being, as said above, both smart and clever (and I thiink the family thing might be interesting - whereas Rose had a very strong relationship with Jackie, based on them being each other's only family, Martha seems caught in between lots of bits of family that she no doubt loves but which are also exhausting), Tennant being with a few exceptions fun without the irritating excesses he is sometimes scripted into. The almost ritual nature of the "new-companion-is-stunned-by-Tardis" scene was nice, as were the references to love and loss - The Doctor not having a brother any more, the gripped hand and "run", his nervous, broken account of Rose at the end. Likewise the us/not us - the DNA assimiliation, the "non-humanising" kiss, the slabs who look human but aren't and the Judoon who at first seem hostile to humans, then represent the law supposedly protecting the humans, then show bureacrats' indifference to the humans' imminent deaths from asphyxia or irradiation. Saxon seems to plug into that us/not us idea as well, but we'll see.
Promising start, then, definitely, I thought. |
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